critical thinking

Teaching critical thinking to combat fake news and bullshit: You have to start young

oracknows — Tue, 23 May 2017 01:33:04 +0000

Teaching critical thinking to combat fake news and bullshit: You have to start young

As much as I like to deconstruct pseudoscientific claims, particularly about health, medicine, and health care, Sometimes it gets a bit draining. There's just so much pseudoscience, so much credulity, so much sheer idiocy out there that trying to refute them and encourage a more skeptical mindset often feels like pissing into the ocean, for all the effect it has. In the age of fake news and Donald Trump, it even feels as though we're going backward—and not slowly, either. That's why I felt it was time for a bit of a break, a bit more optimism than I've been able to muster before. So it was a good thing that I happened across an article by Julia Belluz and Alvin Chang entitled This researcher may have discovered the antidote to health bullshit.

I've always suspected that the key to combatting bullshit of all stripes, be it related to health (one of the more dangerous forms), conspiracy theories, or one of the many other varieties of nonsense, pseudoscience, conspiracy theories, and quackery, will be starting young. Let's face it. By the time we're adults, changing the way we think is very difficult. That's not to say that it can't be done, but in general you have to want to change. Again, let's face it. Most people don't want to change. They resist it. That's part of the reason why adults are so good at motivated reasoning, in which they become very good at finding observations and evidence that support their preexisting point of view while downplaying or discounting evidence that does not. In essence, they develop only part of the skills needed to be a skeptic in that they are very good at deconstructing ideas they disagree with but remain not so good at critically examining ideas that they do agree with that might lack good evidence to support them.

Yes, as Andy Oxman shows, you have to get 'em young. He relates a story about his visit to his then 10 year old son's class in 2000.that shows how children actually have a proclivity for becoming skeptical:

“I told them that some teenagers had discovered that red M&Ms gave them a good feeling in their body and helped them write and draw more quickly,” Oxman said. “But there also were some bad effects: a little pain in their stomach, and they got dizzy if they stood up quickly.”

He challenged the kids to try to find out if the teens were right. He split the class into small groups and gave each group a bag of M&Ms.

The children quickly figured out they had to try eating M&Ms of different colors to find out what happens, but that it wouldn’t be a fair test if they could see the color of the M&Ms. In other words, they intuitively understood the concept of “blinding” in a clinical trial. (This is when researchers prevent study participants and doctors from knowing who got what treatment so they’re less likely to be biased about the outcome.)

In a short time, they were running their own blinded, randomized trials — the gold standard for testing medical claims — in the classroom. By the end of their experiment, Oxman said, “They figured out that there was little if any difference in the effects of the different colors and they asked me if the teenagers who made the claim really believed that.”

As a result of this experience, Oxman began working with other academics to develop curricula designed to teach critical thinking skills in children. The idea is to arm them with the skills needed to spot "alternative facts" more readily and, as importantly, how to keep fake news from spreading in the first place. He's not the only one who asked this question. So did Imogen Evans, Hazel Thornton, Iain Chalmers and Paul Glasziou, who wrote a book called Testing Treatments that's available for free as a downloadable PDF. In 2012, Oxman teamed up with one of the authors of the book, Sir Iain Chalmers, asking him to help to develop curricula based on the concepts in the book appropriate for primary school children

Because Oxman had ties with researchers in Uganda, he tested the new materials there on children between 10-12 years of age. Personally, when I first saw that, I thought that ten years old is a bit old to start the process. I would have thought that age eight or even six would be the time to start. Be that as it may, Oxman ran a randomized trial in which a representative sample of eligible schools were randomized either to control (no change in curriculum) or including the Informed Health Choices (as the program came to be known) primary school resources (textbooks, exercise books, and a teachers' guide) in the lesson plan. Teachers teaching the Informed Health Choices curriculum attended a 2 day introductory workshop and gave nine 80 min lessons during one school term. The lessons addressed 12 concepts essential to assessing claims about treatment effects and making informed health choices.

Twelve key concepts were emphasized:

Claims

Treatments might be harmful

Personal experiences or anecdotes (stories) are an unreliable basis for assessing the effects of most treatments

Widely used treatments or treatments that have been used for a long time are not necessarily beneficial or safe

New, brand-named, or more expensive treatments may not be better than available alternatives

Opinions of experts or authorities do not alone provide a reliable basis for deciding on the benefits and harms of treatments

Conflicting interests may result in misleading claims about the effects of treatments

Comparisons

Evaluating the effects of treatments requires appropriate comparisons

Apart from the treatments being compared, the comparison groups need to be similar (ie, “like needs to be compared with like”)

If possible, people should not know which of the treatments being compared they are receiving

Small studies in which few outcome events occur are usually not informative and the results may be misleading

The results of single comparisons of treatments can be misleading

Choices

Treatments usually have beneficial and harmful effects

These are indeed key concepts that any medical skeptic needs to know and understand. I've empnasized pretty much all of them at one time or another over the last 12 years. Heck, we even have names for some of them, such as the appeal to antiquity to describe the concept that just because a treatment is old does not make it better. After all, many of these "ancient" remedies date back to times when medicine was anything but scientific and the very basics of what causes disease were not understood and instead diseases were attributed to "imbalances" in humors, "bad air," or even the intervention of malign spirits. Any of them that might work were basically discovered by sheer accident, and ancient herbal remedies that work have mostly already been picked over and turned into purified drugs.

The result was a publication in The Lancet. At the end, results from students at non-curriculum schools were compared with those of students at Informed Health Choices schools on a 24-question multiple choice test on the 12 concepts (two questions per concept). The results were striking:

The average score for children in the intervention schools was 62·4% (SD 18·8) compared with 43·1% (15·2) in the control schools. The adjusted mean difference (based on the regression analysis) was 20·0% (95% CI 17·3–22·7; p<0·00001) higher in the intervention than in the control group. Appendix 1 shows the distribution of test scores. In the intervention schools, 3967 (69%) of 5753 children had a passing score (≥13 of 24 correct answers), compared with 1186 (27%) of 4430 in the control schools (table 2). The adjusted difference (based on the odds ratio from the logistic regression analysis) was 50% more children who passed (95% CI 44–55; p<0·00001) in the intervention than in the control group.

Noting:

Use of the Informed Health Choices primary school resources had a large effect on the ability of primary school children in Uganda to assess claims about treatment effects. This effect was larger for children with better reading skills, but the intervention was effective for children lacking basic reading skills, as well as for children with basic or advanced reading skills. This effect was achieved even though the learning materials and the tests were in English, which was not the children's first language. Based on findings from pilot testing both the resources and the test used to measure the outcomes, we were surprised by the size of the effect, which is also large in comparison to other education interventions in primary schools in low-income and middle-income countries,20 and other interventions to teach critical thinking for all ages in high-income countries.11 In addition, the intervention had a positive effect on the children's intended behaviours and the teachers' mastery of the key concepts.

Overall, about one-fifth of the children achieved a test score indicating that they had mastered the key concepts (getting at least 20 questions out of the 24 correct), while less than 1% of the children in control schools achieved that high a score. This is quite an effect.

The authors do acknowledge weaknesses in their study. One thing I tend to question is whether the questions on the multiple choice test actually correspond to what the authors say they do. In other words, we don't know if the children learned how to answer test questions but at the end of the teaching didn't know how to apply the concepts they learned to real life. We also have no way of knowing what the long term effects of these interventions are and whether they will actually have measurable effects on the health choices made by these participants when they are adults. I also hate to be the pessimist, but I find it disappointing that, even after this intervention, only one-fifth of the children mastered all of the concepts and the average score among those who underwent the teaching still got more than 1/3 of the questions wrong.

As much as there is an emphasis on starting to learn critical thinking at a young age, all is not lost for us old farts:

Separately, the researchers also created a podcast on critical thinking concepts for parents, and tested that approach in another randomized controlled trial, also published in the Lancet. They were successful here as well: Nearly twice as many parents who listened to the podcast series passed a test on their understanding of key health concepts compared with parents in the control group.

Or, in a bit more detail:

We recruited parents between July 21, 2016, and Oct 7, 2016. We randomly assigned 675 parents to the podcast group (n=334) or the public service announcement group (n=341); 561 (83%) participants completed follow-up. The mean score for parents in the podcast group was 67·8% (SD 19·6) compared with 52·4% (17·6) in the control group (adjusted mean difference 15·5%, 95% CI 12·5–18·6; p<0·0001). In the podcast group, 203 (71%) of 288 parents had a predetermined passing score (≥11 of 18 correct answers) compared with 103 (38%) of 273 parents in the control group (adjusted difference 34%, 95% CI 26–41; p<0·0001). No adverse events were reported.

Studies like these, for all their messiness and shortcomings that are unavoidable in carrying out studies like this, give me hope. We human beings have cognitive wiring that leave us prone to making all sorts of incorrect inferences and latching on to all sorts of pseudoscientific beliefs, particularly about health. Critical thinking, while second nature in some areas (such as economic; e.g., when buying a used car), is not natural to most humans, particularly when it comes to health claims, where anecdotes can profoundly mislead and we are very quick to confuse correlation with causation. It can be taught, however. The problem is that there has to be the will and resources to teach it, as well as a large enough core of motivated teachers trained to do it. Then there's the issue of competing for time among existing subjects that have to be taught. I can't help but wonder if, rather than teaching critical thinking like this as a module separate from ohter subjects, it would be more effective to find a way to weave training in critical thinking into all subjects, especially science, math, and history, but by no means limited to them and including topics like writing, literature, and other humanities.

However it's done, the need is acute. 2016 was the year fake news and bullshit appeared to have reached a tipping point. The need to be able to recognize and combat it is more acute than ever, and it's never too early to start inculcating critical thinking skills into our children, who will need them more than our generation ever did.

oracknows Mon, 05/22/2017 - 21:33

Tags

Clinical trials

complementary and alternative medicine

medicine

Paranormal

Pseudoscience

Quackery

Skepticism/Critical Thinking

Andy Oxman

critical thinking

Informed Health Choices

complementary and alternative medicine

medicine

Categories

Medicine

Hi Orac,

The statements about school curriculum in this post got me thinking about an idea I've had for a while. As we all know, the statistics about employments in autistic persons are poor (58% unemployed, ht_tps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25891885 and ht_tps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24077909 from that search: ("Unemployment"[Mesh]) AND "Child Development Disorders, Pervasive"[Mesh] ) and it's not for lack of motivation or education. On the other hand, I do know our governmental agency here in the province will provide a small stipend to both the employee and the employer for part-time work (20 hours per week) and there are other programs for salaried workers depending from where the pool of money come from.

In the case of the 20 hours program, my brother is going for an interview today and tomorrow for a position where he will assemble utensils in bag for restaurants (I'm not sure of the status of the company in question: non-profit or for profit) but in my case, the idea consist of something like Cochrane collaboration coupled with an educational program for (autistic) workers with the result of that work given to the population in the form of scientific publications, layman publications and maybe more as the idea or business grow.

Of course, my comment is a tangent to critical thinking but I have that in mind as a goal too, which is to teach about it, especially in the layman publications area.

Basically, I want to kill many birds (critical thinking, jobs for autistic person, taming the many firehoses of scientific publishing) with one stone.

Alain

I hope they start providing this curriculum to schools here, and in other countries, too. It may not be perfect, but it sounds like it helps.

I would be pleased to have my kids exposed to more critical thinking skills in school (in the context of health choices and in other areas), but I can also imagine the protests that some parents would make, especially if their kids started applying those critical thinking skills to dearly-held political or religious beliefs.

Orac writes,

We human beings have cognitive wiring that leave us prone to making all sorts of incorrect inferences and latching on to all sorts of pseudoscientific beliefs, particularly about health.

MJD says,

Q. Can critical thinking eliminate the placebo effect.

If the answer is NO, integrative medicine is in it's infancy.

@Heather: Indeed, schools in many US states, most notoriously Texas, are de-emphasizing critical thinking. Because if the kids learn to think critically, they might end up like Molly Ivins:

I believe all Southern liberals come from the same starting point--race. Once you figure out they are lying to you about race, you start to question everything.

Good news--now, how do we get it to go viral? How do we make critical thinking “cool”?

My college student grandson is taking every logic class available and we are having great fun discussing and applying what he’s learning. Grammie is learning some new bits as well! I have to add that he feels he’s pretty much alone in this effort and that he is surrounded by (how to say it?) idiots at his university. They actually have a “pre-chiropractic” major! This is a very well-respected State University.

They actually have a “pre-chiropractic” major!

Which I presume is distinct from a "pre-med" major. Compared to the latter, the "pre-chiropractic" major would presumably have less stringent requirements for organic chemistry, which you don't really need if you are just going to be manipulating your patients' spines. But I'm not sure I want to know the details.

I have been fortunate never to be affiliated with a university that had a separate "pre-med" major (there is a nursing program at my present university, but for many in that program it's a terminal bachelor's degree). If you want to follow up your undergraduate education with medical school, you have to take an actual major (for obvious reasons biology is the most common choice, but there is no set requirement; humanities, chemistry, physics, and engineering majors have been known to go on to med school) plus whatever additional courses the med schools require that aren't part of your major or general requirements. I like to think it helps to train potential doctors in critical thinking (at least in the area covered by the major), but it's not foolproof. Pre-meds are notorious, at least among physics types, for doing minimum work for maximum grade (the ones who actually major in physics are exceptions, because unlike most pre-meds they are actually interested in physics).

Who needs critical thinking courses (and civics, I might add) when we have Internet sites like Infowars and Natural News?

I used to work for a local authority promoting road safety and environmental awareness (yes an odd combination, but that's local authorities for you). We found that resources which embedded the messages within the existing curriculum were most likely to be adopted by teachers. When a national curriculum was introduced there was a huge opportunity to provide resources that made it easy for teachers to 'tick the boxes' they needed to tick. Teachers are under a lot of pressure both in terms of time and money for lesson materials so it is important that resources are of good quality and either provided free or copyright-free especially as you are competing with materials provided by large corporations which can have unhelpful messages alongside the maths english or whatever.. There is a lot to be said for providing resources in a variety of subjects which cover the subject requirements, but which also teach critical thinking.

@JeffM: As Sam Goldwyn said, "If I want your opinion I'll give it to you."

In light of my own areas of expertise ( aw... rather than recount, I think you know the drill), SURE, you have to get them young- the foundation of abstract and scientific thought ( think its mathematic roots) lies in pre-formal operational thought so of course the earliest school levels.

re Orac's last line in the OP
my comment above should also clarify the problems the adults had this year..

When my kids were just kids I would make an effort to get them to question what they saw.
One time stands out in my memory. The kids were in elementary school, and the Fox network (of course) had a credulous special with Uri Geller. When he did his spoon bending I told them to concentrate on watching only his hands. When the host said, "Now we will see..." my daughter cut in with "a man bending a spoon." They both cracked up. I stopped worrying that they wouldn't learn to think critically.

Suspected that you would be writing about this article but did not expect it to be the next day. However would like to point out that it also requires "education" to get people to not think. This idea is covered in Suki Kim’s work, "The Art of Essay Writing for the Brainwashed" {https://www.pri.org/stories/2014-12-29/art-essay-writing-brainwashed}, Without You, There Is No Us: My Time with the Sons of North Korea's Elite {http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20685373-without-you-there-is-no-us}.

Earlier this year, a colleague sent me the following:

At the University of Washington, biologists were recently deluged with over 20,000 applications for enrollment in a new course titled “Calling Bullshit in the Age of Big Data”. In 20 minutes, the course was entirely booked up. The syllabus and course is free for other colleges and universities to teach, provided acknowledgement of the originators.

The web site for the course offers a bevy of useful resources. As you can see from the course descriptions, one of the subjects to be covered is homeopathy. For a laugh, read the disclaimer on the home page, but don’t mistake the course as a joke.

http://callingbullshit.org/index.html

Is it it critical thinking when you are given the right information? I would rather say that critical thinking is when you understand that what you are told cannot be true.

This study comes out at an interesting time for me. I've actually been considering changing careers and going into elementary education for a number of reasons. The chance to introduce critical thinking skills to young people is certainly high on pro side of my pro/con list.

C.C. - I hate to be a downer, but one of the reasons the spousal unit is very glad to be retiring next year (middle school science, civics, geography) is that he does very little actual teaching any more. Most of his classroom time is devoted to preparing the kids to take standardized tests.

Isnt Orac worried that the Teachers Union, or worse, Berkeley kids and faculty, read this piece? After all, you are indicting public school ehjuhmakayshun and gawd knows they might come after you for criticizing their safe spaces

So much for American education.

Kristina,

You think far too little of higher education.

Panacea, she also thinks too little of teachers. Especially the challenges dealing with a diverse population, and the hormones starting in middle school.

As a former Jr, High Life Science teacher, It can be very hard to even try and teach. I had one class that the average reading percentile was 27. You don't make much progress with most of the students but work hard to help ones you can.

The Galileo Gambit: Just because your quackery is rejected by the establishment does not make you Galileo or Semmelweis

oracknows — Mon, 20 Mar 2017 10:05:07 +0000

The Galileo Gambit: Just because your quackery is rejected by the establishment does not make you Galileo or Semmelweis

[Orac note: A combination of power outages, travel to Seattle, and trying to write something for my not-so-super-secret other blog conspired to leave me with nothing for this morning. So I thought I'd resurrect this old gem, which hasn't been reposted in at least four years. I actually did try to remove the dead links (this post dates back nearly 12 years in some form or another), but I probably missed a couple. I also changed the post a little, just to remove clearly outdated stuff. In the mean time, be assured that, with no more travel planned and our power restored, things should get back to normal here at the old blog, with no further (foreseen) outages. Oh, wait. I still have to troubleshoot my iMac, which was running at the time of the last outage and now won't boot properly. Damn, I hope I don't have to reformat the hard drive and start from scratch.]

Certain recent commenters reminded me of a topic I first wrote about here on Respectful Insolence, way, way back in the deep, dark days of Blogspot and ugly web design. It's a favorite tactic used by alternative medicine aficionados (not to mention pseudoscientists, pseudohistorians, and other cranks). Purveyors of pseudoscience frequently invoke Galileo and other scientists like Ignaz Semmelweiss, who were at first rejected by the scientific orthodoxy of the time and had to fight to get their ideas accepted. The implication, of course, is that their ideas, whatever they may be (alternative medicine, intelligent design, Holocaust denial, psychic abilities, etc.), are on the same plane as those of Galileo or Semmelweiss. Frequently, they will add a list of famous scientists or experts who made predictions about the impossibility of something or other and were later found wrong, so much so that the statements sound ridiculous today. For example, here's a famous list that had been been making the rounds on Usenet for years even 12 years ago. Some of these quotes may in fact be urban legends (and, in fact, I'd be grateful to anyone who points out urban legends in here to me), but let's for the moment assume they are all legitimate quotes:

..so many centuries after the Creation it is unlikely that anyone could find hitherto unknown lands of any value. - Committee advising Ferdinand and Isabella regarding Columbus' proposal, 1486
I would sooner believe that two Yankee professors lied, than that stones fell from the sky. - Thomas Jefferson, 1807 on hearing an eyewitness report of falling meteorites.

Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You're crazy. - Drillers who Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist to his project to drill for oil in 1859.

Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction. - Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872

[Orac's note: This one is particularly amusing to me, given that so many alternative medicine proponents reject Pasteur's theory in favor of Beauchamps. Here, they seem to want to have it both ways. They reject Pasteur when arguing against antibiotics, claiming that bacteria are not the cause of disease, or attacking vaccines as useless and harmful. However, they have no problem invoking this quote. Of course, they don't seem to realize that their use of this quote implicitly acknowledges that Pasteur's theories, although initially quite controversial, were ultimately proven correct.]

The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will forever be shut from the intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon. - Sir John Eric Ericksen, British surgeon, appointed Surgeon-Extraordinary to Queen Victoria 1873.

[Orac's note: As a surgeon, I have to point out that, at the time, this was not an entirely unreasonable statement. Operating in the abdomen was risky in the extreme, with a high rate of death from peritonitis that could approach 50% in some operations (that is, until the invention of antibiotics). In fact, I sometimes wonder how the great surgeons of 140 years ago managed to operate on anyone's abdomen and have the patient actually survive the procedure. Operating in the chest was also out of the question, given the problem of reinflating the lung afterward, and certainly the brain was completely off-limits. In any case, there was no way Sir Ericksen (or anyone else) could be faulted for failing to forsee the advancements in anaesthesia, antibiotics, surgical technique, and patient care that would ultimately allow such surgery to succeed and even become routine (although one does have to point out that surgeons were already operating in the abdomen reasonably successfully at the time).]

Such startling announcements as these should be deprecated as being unworthy of science and mischievious to to its true progress. - Sir William Siemens, 1880, on Edison's announcement of a sucessful light bulb.

We are probably nearing the limit of all we can know about astronomy. - Simon Newcomb, astronomer, 1888

Fooling around with alternating current is just a waste of time. Nobody will use it, ever. - Thomas Edison, 1889

[Orac's note: It's well-known that Thomas Edison wanted to promote the use of direct current rather than alternating current. It was a battle of rival technologies (sometimes called the War of Currents), not unlike the war between Betamax and VHS, but on a much larger scale. Edison ultimately lost.]

The more important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all been discovered, and these are now so firmly established that the possibility of their ever being supplanted in consequence of new discoveries is exceedingly remote.... Our future discoveries must be looked for in the sixth place of decimals. - physicist Albert. A. Michelson, 1894

Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible. - Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895.

It is apparent to me that the possibilities of the aeroplane, which two or three years ago were thought to hold the solution to the [flying machine] problem, have been exhausted, and that we must turn elsewhere. - Thomas Edison, 1895

The demonstration that no possible combination of known substances, known forms of machinery, and known forms of force can be united in a practicable machine by which men shall fly for long distances through the air, seems to the writer as complete as it is possible for the demonstration of any physical fact to be. - astronomer S. Newcomb, 1906

Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value. - Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre.

Caterpillar landships are idiotic and useless. Those officers and men are wasting their time and are not pulling their proper weight in the war. - Fourth Lord of the British Admiralty, 1915, in regards to use of tanks in war.

Professor Goddard does not know the relation between action and reaction and the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react. He seems to lack the basic knowledge ladled out daily in high schools. - 1921 New York Times editorial about Robert Goddard's revolutionary rocket work.

[Orac's note: Why the New York Times would be considered an "expert" in rocketry such that it would be of interest to use it as an example of an "expert" making a statement that is later proven wrong, I have no idea. This quote is at best irrelevant.]

The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular? - David Sarnoff's associates in response to his urgings for investment in the radio in the 1920s.

"All a trick." "A Mere Mountebank." "Absolute swindler." "Doesn't know what he's about." "What's the good of it?" "What useful purpose will it serve?" - Members of Britain's Royal Society, 1926, after a demonstration of television.

This foolish idea of shooting at the moon is an example of the absurd lengths to which vicious specialisation will carry scientists. -A.W. Bickerton, physicist, NZ, 1926

Who the hell wants to hear actors talk? - H.M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927.

Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau. - Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1929.

[Orac's note: Of course, we had the same sort of idiotic statements coming from "experts" during the Internet bubble of the 1990's; for example, this book predicting that the Dow would reach 36,000. How many times did we hear that the Internet "changed everything" and that the stock market had no where to go but continually up?]

There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will. -- Albert Einstein, 1932

The energy produced by the atom is a very poor kind of thing. Anyone who expects a source of power from the transformation of these atoms is talking moonshine. - Ernst Rutherford, 1933

The whole procedure [of shooting rockets into space]...presents difficulties of so fundamental a nature, that we are forced to dismiss the notion as essentially impracticable, in spite of the author's insistent appeal to put aside prejudice and to recollect the supposed impossibility of heavier-than-air flight before it was actually accomplished. Richard van der Riet Wooley, British astronomer, reviewing P.E. Cleator's Rockets in Space, Nature, March 14, 1936

Space travel is utter bilge! -Sir Richard Van Der Riet Wolley, astronomer

I think there is a world market for maybe five computers. - Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943

Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons. - Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949

[Orac's note: Heh heh. This statement isn't an incorrect prediction. Think about it. Most computers don't weigh more than 1.5 tons these days, do they?]

I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won't last out the year. - The editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall, 1957

Space travel is bunk. -Sir Harold Spencer Jones, Astronomer Royal of Britain, 1957, two weeks before the launch of Sputnik

There is practically no chance communications space satellites will be used to provide better telephone, telegraph, television, or radio service inside the United States. -T. Craven, FCC Commissioner, 1961

We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out. - Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962.

But what... is it good for? - Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, 1968, commenting on the microchip.

There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home. - Ken Olson, President, Chairman and Founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, 1977

The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a 'C,' the idea must be feasible. - A Yale University management professor in response to Fred Smith's paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service. (Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.)

I'm just glad it'll be Clark Gable who's falling on his face and not Gary Cooper. - Gary Cooper on his decision not to take the leading role in Gone With The Wind.

A cookie store is a bad idea. Besides, the market research reports say America likes crispy cookies, not soft and chewy cookies like you make. - Response to Debbi Fields' idea of starting Mrs. Fields' Cookies.

If I had thought about it, I wouldn't have done the experiment. The literature was full of examples that said you can't do this. - Spencer Silver on the work that led to the unique adhesives for 3M "Post-It" Notepads.

So we went to Atari and said, 'Hey, we've got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or we'll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we'll come work for you.' And they said, 'No.' So then we went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, 'Hey, we don't need you. You haven't got through college yet.' - Apple Computer Inc. founder Steve Jobs on attempts to get Atari and H-P interested in his and Steve Wozniak's personal computer.

You want to have consistent and uniform muscle development across all of your muscles? It can't be done. It's just a fact of life. You just have to accept inconsistent muscle development as an unalterable condition of weight training. - Response to Arthur Jones, who solved the "unsolvable" problem by inventing Nautilus.

640K ought to be enough for anybody. - Bill Gates, 1981

[Orac's note: Of course, in 1981, Gates was correct. No one really needed more than 640K in a personal computer. There wasn't much you could actually do with more than that in 1981...]

So, again, what's the point of alties or other pseudoscientists invoking Galileo or any of the hideously incorrect prognostications listed above? Again, obviously, this technique seeks to denigrate the experts who reject the altie's claims as not knowing what they're talking about or as close-minded, unable to have the vision that they do. It also deceptively tries to associate the quack, crank, pseudoscientist, or pseudohistorian with the theories and findings of great visionaries that went against conventional wisdom and were thus rejected by the experts of the day--and then later shown to be correct. It's a transparent ploy, about which Michael Shermer once said, "Heresy does not equal correctness."

Some call it the Galileo gambit (although in actuality Galileo is probably a bad example for pseudoscientists to use, given that he was persecuted by the Church, and not by his fellow scientists). Others call it the Semmelweis gambit. Whatever you call this particular gambit, I always like to note in response that history is indeed full of tales of the lone scientist working in spite of his peers and flying in the face of the doctrines of the day in his or her field of study. No doubt there are still a fair number of such scientists today. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending upon your point of view), the vast majority of them turn out to be utterly wrong. They disappear into the mists of history, leaving not even a footnote in the grand history of science (although they might leave behind some crappy articles in the peer-reviewed scientific literature). As Shermer so correctly put it in his book Why People Believe Weird Things (a book I highly recommend to anyone interested in improving his or her critical thinking skills):

For every Galileo shown the instruments of torture for advocating scientific truth, there are a thousand (or ten thousand) unknowns whose 'truths' never pass scientific muster with other scientists. The scientific community cannot be expected to test every fanstastic claim that comes along, especially when so many are logically inconsistent.

Precisely.

For every Galileo, Ignaz Semmelweis, Nicolaus Copernicus, Charles Darwin, Louis Pasteur, etc., whose scientific ideas were either ignored, rejected, or vigorously attacked by the scientific community of his time and then later accepted, there are untold numbers of others whose ideas were either ignored or rejected initially and then were never accepted--and never will be accepted. Why? Because they were wrong! The reason the ideas of Galileo, Semmelweis, Copernicus, Darwin, Pasteur, et al, were ultimately accepted as correct by the scientific community is because they turned out to be correct! Their observations and ideas stood up to repeated observation and scientific experimentation by many scientists in many places over many years. The weight of data supporting their ideas was so overwhelming that eventually even the biggest skeptics could no longer stand. That's the way science works. It may be messy, and it may take longer, occasionally even decades or even longer, than we in the business might like to admit, but eventually in science the truth wins out. In fact, the best way for a scientist to become famous and successful in his or her field is to come up with evidence that strongly challenges established theories and concepts and then weave that evidence into a new theory. Albert Einstein didn't end up in the history books by simply reconfirming and recapitulating Newton's Laws. Semmelweis and Pasteur didn't wind up in the history books by confirming the concept that disease was caused by an "imbalance of humours" (although Semmelweis probably did hurt himself by refusing to publish his results for many years; his data was so compelling it remains puzzling why he did not do so). I daresay that none of the Nobel Prize winners won that prestigious award by demonstrating something that the scientific establishment already believed. No! They won it by discovering something new and important!

Unfortunately, to most lay people who don't have a strong background in science, the scientific method, or the history of science, such trickery can sound convincing on the surface. For example, you have a quack like Hulda Clark claiming she has a cure for cancer and AIDS and then claiming that the scientific establishment can't accept it. Add a dash of paranoia about big medicine and big pharma "suppressing" her "cure," and it's a potent brew of deception. This ploy is particularly appealing to Americans, because our whole national psyche has in its core a tendency to root for the outsider, the underdog. Alties, pseudoscientists, and cranks tap into that deep-seated sympathy we tend to have for the persecuted outsider and use it to their advantage. It's the same with creationists, who use every well-deserved debunking they get as evidence that they are a "threat" to the established scientific order. The only way to combat such deceptive comparisons is to point out again and again Shermer's dictum that "heresy does not equal correctness" and try to keep the discussion on the hard evidence.

I think it's appropriate to finish with another Michael Shermer quote:

They laughed at Copernicus. They laughed at the Wright brothers. Yes, well, they also laughed at the Marx Brothers. Being laughed at does not mean you are right.

Use it the next time an alt med believer tries to imply that the fact that the scientific establishment mocks their ideas means that they must be on to something. Except do what I do and use the Three Stooges instead of the Marx Brothers.

Especially Curly. Nyuck, nyuck, nyuck.

oracknows Mon, 03/20/2017 - 06:05

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Free Thought

There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will. — Albert Einstein, 1932

I have no idea whether that quote is authentic, but seven years later Einstein signed a letter to President Roosevelt advising the latter of then-recent advances in the fission of uranium by Fermi and Szilard (according to Wikipedia, the latter actually wrote the letter):

Some recent work by E. Fermi and L. Szilard, which has been communicated to me in manuscript, leads me to expect that the element uranium may be turned into a new and important source of energy in the immediate future.

Einstein, whose pacifistic views were well-known, understood the military implications of these experiments, as well as similar experiments being conducted in Germany at the time:

I understand that Germany has actually stopped the sale of uranium from the Czechoslovakian mines which she has taken over. That she should have taken such early action might perhaps be understood on the ground that the son of the German Under-Secretary of State, von Weizsacker, is attached to the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute in Berlin, where some of the American work on uranium is now being repeated.

Even if the quote in question is genuine, note that Einstein changed his opinion on the basis of experimental results that were obtained between 1932 and 1939. That's how science works: if your opinions don't fit the facts, you change your opinions.

To its credit, after Apollo 11 successfully landed on the moon, the New York Times published a retraction.
As for Thomas Watson's comment, he was speaking in 1943, when computers used vacuum tubes. It is not surprising that he would have thought and said that.

My nomination for best Galileo Award in recent times goes to Linus Pauling for his rejection of quasicrystals (structures that are ordered but not periodic)

Pauling said, "There is no such thing as quasicrystals, only quasi-scientists.", according to Dan Schechtman (who got a Nobel for discovering the phenomenon in 2011) .

Although meeting initial disbelief from some scientists, Schectman's discovery was deemed worthy for quick publication and was confirmed within a decade by others. I don't know of any evidence that Pauling ever accepted that quasi crystals were real.

This is ironic to me on two levels. First, Pauling, although the premier authority in this field, apparently was unaware of some earlier work that showed that such things were mathematically possible. Also of course, Pauling's scientific stature is often cited as a reason to believe in Vit C cures. This shows that he wasn't infallible even in his own area of expertise.

Of course, we had the same sort of idiotic statements [as Prof. Fisher's] coming from “experts” during the Internet bubble of the 1990’s

And likewise during the real estate bubble of the 2000s (which may have peaked after Orac first wrote this post). When that bubble popped in 2007, Goldman Sachs' then CFO David Vinier made the following infamous statement:

We were seeing things that were 25-standard deviation moves, several days in a row.

As the link notes, the probability of such a move happening even once, let alone "several days in a row", is so ridiculously small as to make one suspect there was something wrong with the model Goldman Sachs was using. Even assuming the most pathological probability distribution for which a standard deviation can be defined (let alone the Gaussian distribution that they were most likely using), the highest possible likelihood for seeing three consecutive such moves is once per 244 million trading days, or about once in a million years.

I've long since lost the reference on this, but apparently several models in use at the time did not allow the rate of increase in real estate values to be negative. This despite the early 1990s crash in real estate that caused prices to drop in California and New England.

Orac's example,

Spencer Silver on the work that led to the unique adhesives for 3M “Post-It” Notepads.

MJD says,

Fascinating story, Mr. Art Fry was also instrumental in the "3M Post-it Notepads".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Fry

Getting personal, I was an adhesive chemist at the H.B. Fuller Company (Minnesota) and co-invented a replacement for natural rubber latex in medical packaging.

https://patents.google.com/patent/US7695809B1/en

The inventive latex-free medical adhesive is immensely successful but unrecognized because publicity would expose decades of unintended harm from latex-based medical products.

Indeed, the resulting phrase "not manufactured with natural rubber latex" may be the only reward for such an endeavor.

@ Orac and his minions,

Q. How does a parent protect their child from atypical immunity and allergy-induced regressive autism.

A. Avoid medical products that have natural rubber latex warnings.

Is there a "natural-latex Gambit"? :-)

And you wonder why I've put you back into permanent moderation. I was thinking of releasing you again, but then you had to go and indulge your latex perseveration. Oops! In permanent moderation you stay!

And then there is the "everything that can be invented has been invented." statement attributed to Charles H. Duell the Commissioner of US patent office in 1899. But that may be apocryphal.

Orac
Galileo is probably a bad example for pseudoscientists to use, given that he was persecuted by the Church

Galileo is an excellent example for pseudoscientists. He was wrong.

He got into trouble with the Church for several reasons, more political that heretical, overall. The reason he could not get out of trouble was that it was obvious that his theory was indefensible.

When confronting a paranoid autocrat such as Urban VIII plus the Roman the Inquisition, it really helps to have a theory that works, at least to some extent.

It also helps to have powerful and knowledgeable allies. Galileo had made a lot of enemies over the years including, IIRC, the leadership of the pontifical observatory, that is, some of the best astronomers in Europe at the time.

Conceptually he and Copernicus and Kepler and a few others were correct that it was a heliocentric solar system. The problem was proving it and Galileo's theory just did not work. A theory that predicts one tide a day is not credible.

It a pity Shermer is perpetuating the Galileo myth.

Clearly you've forgotten how much I detest pedantry. :-) (Through gritted teeth.)

A theory that predicts one tide a day is not credible.

I'd be interested to see a link on this, because I have never heard this part of the story.

It may be obvious to us today why there are two tides a day: not only does the moon pull harder on the side of the Earth facing it than on the center of the Earth, it pulls harder on the center of the Earth than on the side facing away. But this would not have been so obvious to Galileo. Calculus would not be invented for another 80 years or so after Galileo built his first telescope, and the inverse square law wasn't known yet--I think Newton did both of those things, but the latter was based on Kepler's work if not done by Kepler himself.

Galileo also assumed that orbits were circular, as did Copernicus and everybody else up to that point--it was Kepler who noticed that the orbits were elliptical rather than circular. In fairness, the measurements available at the time weren't precise enough to distinguish the two, and of course a circle is the limiting case of an ellipse as the eccentricity goes to zero (all of the planets known at the time are in orbits with small eccentricities).

Galileo could prove that the geocentric model was incorrect: among other things, it predicted that Venus would never be observed more than half full, and Galileo saw Venus in such a phase.

Not that there weren't things Galileo got wrong. For instance, he observed an eighth-magnitude star one night, recorded its position, observed it again a few nights later, found it wasn't quite in that location, assumed he had mistranscribed the location, and thought nothing further of it. Three and a half centuries later, it was realized that the "star" in question was actually Neptune--if Galileo had followed up that observation, he would have beaten Leverrier and Adams by more than two centuries.

Sir Ericksen

You mean Sir John. Knights (and baronets) are addressed by the honorific 'Sir', followed by their given name and not their family name if their name is not given in full. The same rule applies to women who have been similarly recognised, where the honorific is 'Dame'.

Apologies for the off-topic comment, but I've never understood why so many people make this mistake. Even setting aside commonplace modern examples, if you think of the tales of King Arthur, you don't refer to Sir Lancelot as Sir du Lac, do you?

Of course, as a republican (please note the small 'r'!), I would prefer that these medieval award practices were consigned to history. But since they're not, I'll settle for complaining about another form of their misuse!

I am Mentifex (Latin for "Mindmaker"). I outrank all quack, kooks, cranks and pseudoscientists. Look upon my Google search results and despair. And yet at http://ai.neocities.org/perlmind.txt I have created true artificial intelligence. At http://medium.com/p/657ee242a781 my AI work has made "AI Patents up for grabs."

A cookie store is a bad idea. Besides, the market research reports say America likes crispy cookies, not soft and chewy cookies like you make. – Response to Debbi Fields’ idea of starting Mrs. Fields’ Cookies.

Apparently they were right--hard, crunchy cookies seem to be a large majority of what's on sale.

America also seems to think that cutting chocolate cake into square pieces somehow magically converts it into brownies. They're wrong about that, too.

@ Eric Lund #6:

Galileo's theory of the tides (remember as a Mediterranean, he would never have really seen one) was based on sloshing due to the rotation of the Earth--so he used his theory as confirmation of that as well. In common with most scientists up to and past Newton's time, he rejected the idea that the moon could have some occult effect on the waters of the ocean as rank superstition.

As far as heliocentricism and Galileo go, it should be noted that Shaquille O'Neal and a few other NBA prats are spreading flat earth conspiracy theories far and wide in the news in the last few days. It's enough to make those of us who know something about anything real hang our heads in dismay.

These people have public soapboxes far in excess of their intellectual worth.

OK, just one more:

I daresay that none of the Nobel Prize winners won that prestigious award by demonstrating something that the scientific establishment already believed. No! They won it by discovering something new and important!

Carlo Rubbia leaps immediately to mind. Who-all wins the Nobel for discovering the Higgs boson would add to the list....

viggen @10: But, but they've all been on airplanes! Like, you can see the world isn't flat.

There must be something else to it, something about rejecting the man or something.

(Flat earthers should have their GPS taken away, because if the Earth isn't round (ish) then how could there possibly be satellites around it?)

Lots of the items in the list are merely opinions on what public acceptance of some "thing" will be. The public is a idiot, fickle and unpredictable. Anyone who underestimates what absurdity can be successfully and profitably fobbed off on the public hasn't been paying attention.

One specific on public - the term "microchip", as far as I can tell, was an invention of the popular media or Hollywood. It popped up rather suddenly and not in electronics industry trade magazines.

What changed the truthiness state for many of the items were advances more in technology than significant new finding in science.

I want to see a list of "brave maverick doctors" from the past half century or so who have been proven to be correct in some significant matter against substantial well-accepted ideas of the time. Prusiner I suppose might be regarded as one, but I think it's a stretch.

"Quotes attributed to famous people who have been dead at least 40 years are severely misquoted 30% of the time and falsely attributed a further 30%."

-- V. Lenin

Barry Marshall and H. pylori as the cause of peptic ulcers.

At least if he was going to be reckless as a "maverick" doctor, he was reckless with his own health.

@Justatech: Of COURSE you can have satillites when the earth is flat; they just circle the edge of the world!

Of COURSE you can have satillites when the earth is flat; they just circle the edge of the world!

Yeah, but the math don't work.

Back in my Air Force days, I traveled a bit, and sometimes, we be setting up satellite communications - anywhere between 6 telephone channel SHF stations and single channel, push-to-talk carry on your back radios.

All of them had antennas that had to be pointed at the satellite, and, of course, you needed some one, somewhere else on the earth to talk to, who also had an antenna pointed at the satellite.

We'd have to look at a map and figure out our Lat/Long, then plug that and a bunch of other stuff into a calculator, and out would come the azimuth and elevation to the satellite (now you just need an app)

To understand what was going on, we had training aids - a globe and a bunch of string. After a couple hours it starts to make sense. But on a flat earth, it wouldn't.

Prior to a trip, we'd figure out our look angles and check each others work, coordinate times, and make reservations on the satellite (seriously). Then, once we reached out destinations, we'd talk to each other.

These were people I knew and worked with. We'd been to each others houses, we'd drink beer together. We knew each other by voice. I knew who I was talking to.

We were only able to talk because the math worked, and if you pointed your antenna correctly. If there's a conspiracy to hide the flat earth, me and every other SATCOM literate person on the planet has to be in on it.

I like Carl Sagan’s take on this topic best: “The fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.”

To bring this back on topic -

I would sooner believe that two Yankee professors lied, than that stones fell from the sky. – Thomas Jefferson, 1807 on hearing an eyewitness report of falling meteorites.

According to the historians at https://www.monticello.org/site/blog-and-community/posts/who-liar-now

But otherwise, I believe it is safe to say that what we have here is a little bit of irony (and I hope my seventh-grade English teacher, Mrs. Early, would agree): Benjamin Silliman's statement that Jefferson said "that it was easier to believe that two Yankee Professors could lie than to admit that stones could fall from heaven" is itself a lie. By a Yankee professor.

@ Johnny: well, I was being facetious ;)

Still, your experience is a great example for people who never fly in air planes, or have never watched a ship's mast disappear over the horizon.

Oh, please don't think that I think you were in any way serious. In fact, I think 95%+ of the flat earthers don't really believe it either, and are just trolling the rest of us.

Barry Marshall and H. pylori as the cause of peptic ulcers.

I was going to mention Marshall as well. The fact that it is so hard to identify these brave maverick doctor's whose dismissed ideas turn out to be correct just goes to show how poor the Galileo Gambit is as a predictor.

The whole Galileo Gambit is part and parcel of the extreme confirmation bias exhibited. They reject science because it produces conclusions that disagree with their favourite belief; however, if a scientist or even a quasi-scientist comes up with something they like, then it is lauded as 'The Answer' no matter how bad it is. In order to overcome the cognitive dissonance this produces, they then have to manufacture a reason as to why their hero is ignored by everyone else. And down the rabbit hole of the Galileo Gambit we go.

Johnny, you are going to love to hear about this flat earther's explanation on how satellites work:
http://www.merseysideskeptics.org.uk/2017/01/be-reasonable-episode-038-…

In fact, I think 95%+ of the flat earthers don’t really believe it either, and are just trolling the rest of us.

Oh, I know a guy who definitely believes it; granted, we met in the psych ward. His motivation seems to be extreme Biblical literalism.

@JP#28: clearly someone who didn’t read Isaiah 40:22: “It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in.” The flat earth isn’t even supported by extreme Biblical literalism.

The fact that it is so hard to identify these brave maverick doctor’s whose dismissed ideas turn out to be correct just goes to show how poor the Galileo Gambit is as a predictor.

I have a WAG that for every "crazy" idea that turns out to be correct, there are at least 99 crazy ideas that really are crazy. In medicine, Orac would know the details much better than I. In physics, with which I am more familiar, we have such gems as N-rays, Velikovskian orbital mechanics, cold fusion reactions that don't produce energetic neutrons, and cometesimals bombarding the Earth, just to name a few. And of course there are various medical-type crackpots who wave their hands while mumbling the word "quantum"; I'd say few if any of them know enough math to be able to solve the Schrödinger equation for even a toy problem such as you find in undergraduate level textbooks.

Marshall does seem to fill the bill quite well. From the Wikipedia article "The work of Marshall has produced one of the most radical and important changes in medical perception in the last 50 years."

One of the things that seems to come up quite often, not really part of the Galileo Gambit but tossed around in, if I may be so bold, complementary fashion are the tales of deathbed recantations. "Pasteur recanted on his deathbed! Germ theory is false." It boggles my mind that twits that make such statements don't understand that it wouldn't have mattered if Louis had traveled far and wide for months before he died loudly proclaiming he'd been wrong.

###
On the topic of GPS, for those that like to tinker: Receiver circuit boards using u-blox modules (Neo 6M seems popular, though there are newer variants) can be had for around US$20. I've played with some and they perform spectacularly well. U-blox has free demo software that I find interesting because it shows where the individual satellites actually are relative to Earth's surface. I haven't seen anything else that gives as good a "feel" for what's going on as well as the u-blox demo.

I confess to assuming a flat Earth for my script to assemble pathway segments in Google Earth. Saves 'rithmetic. Haven't ridden my bike off edge so far. 'course I wear a helmet, just in case.

"For every Galileo, Ignaz Semmelweis, Nicolaus Copernicus, Charles Darwin, Louis Pasteur, etc., whose scientific ideas were either ignored, rejected, or vigorously attacked by the scientific community of his time and then later accepted, there are untold numbers of others whose ideas were either ignored or rejected initially and then were never accepted–and never will be accepted. Why? Because they were wrong!"
You seem to consider that being wrong or right is what determines the acceptance of ideas. What about astrology, homeopathy, religions? Those fallacies are accepted by many people. In contrast, there are probably many ideas that are ignored for a century, are not accepted yet, but are correct.
Actually, what you call right or wrong depends on the fact that YOU accept them or not.
In that sense, this circular reasoning is more detrimental to science than a pure probabilistic view where new ideas are more likely to be wrong than right. It is laziness disguised as reasoning.

I have a WAG that for every “crazy” idea that turns out to be correct, there are at least 99 crazy ideas that really are crazy.

Wife and Girlfriend?

Flat earthers are a deliberate ploy by the CIA to belittle every other TRUTH movement by making them appear to be birds of a feather, dontchaknow?

@Rebecca Fisher - not sure if you're serious or not (not enough coffee yet here in New Jersey, USA), but WAG stands for wild-a**ed guess.

@ 9 Orac
Sorry for the pedantry but the Galileo Gambit highly annoys me. It is similar to the claim that Medieval Europeans possibly, including Ferdinand and Isabella, thought the world was flat until Columbus came along.

I suppose it is too much to expect the standard issue anti-vaxer or climate change denialist to know any real history but it tends to drive me crazy!

ARRGH!

# 10 Eric Lund

It may be obvious to us today why there are two tides a day:

It did not matter why. There are two tides a day. Anyone living on the Atlantic seaboard can look out the window and see them.

My suspicion is that because Galileo never left Northern Italy he did not realise how much of a problem this was. Mediterranean tides are in the centimetre range, not metres.

I’d be interested to see a link on this, because I have never heard this part of the story.

I am not sure that I remember the original source(s). It might have been in one of Stillman Drakes books such as Galileo at Work or perhaps Galileo : pioneer scientist. Drake has as least 3 or 4 books and a lot of articles out on Galileo. It could be from another source. I am missing at least one major work on the details of Galileo's trial in my references and I cannot seem to trace it.

After paging through the local university's catalogue listings on Galileo looking for it, I am beginning to wonder if Galileo is the most written-about “scientist” in history. For heaven's sake Bertolt Brecht wrote a play about him!

The best I can dig up at the moment is Thony's blog posting in his blog “The Renaissance Mathematicus”. Note while the writer admires (grudgingly acknowledges?) Galileo's scientific achievements he is not an admirer of Galileo as a person. https://thonyc.wordpress.com/2013/05/13/gopnik-galileo-and-ed-yong-gali…

My lake does not have much in the way of tides either.

jrkrideau (# 36) writes,

ARRGH!

MJD says,

Here's some climate change history (i.e., patent) that may cheer you up!

https://www.google.com/patents/US20120056006

David Bendah's idea is inventive but will it be accepted?

As I put it:

"They laughed at Einstein!"

"Yeah, but they also laughed at Bozo."

One of the themes I'm seeing with these quotes is that they are describing the opinion of one person (or several people) at the very beginning of a new technology when it is unreliable.

I would think airplanes were silly, dangerous toys too if they still had the failure rate of the very early days of aviation. There's a reason that military pilots of the first world war were called "60 minute men"; that's how long you lasted in the air, on average.

But here's the thing: at the beginning of WWI airplanes weren't used much and were terrible. By the end of WWI they were used extensively and huge technological leaps had been made. So yeah, that guy was wrong, but he was also overruled.

And it's weird to talk about science being wrong when it's clearly a *marketing* failure. Of course there was no need for a computer in the home in 1977, there was no *application* for the computer in the home then. The best was Nieman Marcus' kitchen computer (for keeping recipes and the household budget) that required a week's training and a huge sum of money. No one with that kind of money did their own cooking then, so why bother? (I was once gifted with a Nieman Marcus kitchen computer for keeping my recipes. It was just as useless now as then and I returned it.)

Of course there was no need for a computer in the home in 1977, there was no *application* for the computer in the home then.

That was about the time the Apple II first became available. It was more of a toy than a must-have device; my family did not get a computer until 1982. It was a Commodore 64, the hot home computer of the day because it had 64 kB of RAM, four times as much as any competing product. (More evidence that Gates' comment about 640K being enough for anybody made sense at the time.)

The future that technological enthusiasts were envisioning in the 1960s and 1970s with respect to computers is that each home would have a terminal connected to a central computer somewhere. That was how mainframes worked back in the day, and was how I connected to Unix boxes when I had need to do so as an undergraduate. Housewives would order food and such from these terminals and have it delivered to the house. Come to think of it, this notion isn't so different from what we have today with ordering stuff via the World Wide Web.

@MJD: Yes, we're so happy to see a garbage patent application by a convicted scam artist. That's so relevant.

@Panacea (#42),

I provided a perfect example (comment #38) to support Orac's post entitled, "Just because your quackery is rejected by the establishment does not make you Galileo or Semmelweis."

How is this not relevant?

Jeesz.....even when I don't write about the hazards of natural rubber latex I get slammed.

Show me just a little support and I'll stay, I promise.

Because the patent application is just a scam, not quackery, and because you have a history of misusing the patent system to support your nutty ideas.

..so many centuries after the Creation it is unlikely that anyone could find hitherto unknown lands of any value. – Committee advising Ferdinand and Isabella regarding Columbus’ proposal, 1486

False quote, dating back to the 19th century fabulist Washington Irving (responsible for the false impression that Europeans believed in a flat earth before Columbus). In reality, no written record remains of the Talavera Commission, but it is known that they provisionally rejected the proposal because Columbus's estimates of the size of the Earth were incorrect (in part, because he didn't realize that a different definition of mile was used in an earlier estimate). Using the (more) correct estimate, no ship at the time would have been able to make the trip.

To follow up on W. Kevin Vicklund's observations at #45, Columbus was a master at an art we've become very familiar with here: Cherry-picking.

He chose the largest estimate he could find for the length of Eurasia (which would tend to be overestimated if you walked all the way), and accepted Marco Polo's word that "Cipangu" was 3000 miles past that.

He coupled this with Posidonius' estimate of the Earth's circumference, taken by observing the rising and setting times of stars (instead of the sun's altitude at noon on the equinox like Eratosthenes), so atmospheric refraction resulted in an estimate of ~18,000 miles instead of ~25,000.

As I remember hearing, Columbus wasn't on a voyage of discovery anyway, he was on a trade mission. He knew where he was going, and was just proposing an alternate route, right? There just happened to be an inconveniently placed continent in the way.

Yes, and it saved his ass. His crew was ready to string him up because they were having serious problems with their supplies of food and water, cabin fever, and health issues related to lack of Vitamin C (which is not an excuse for prn to pipe in; scurvy is a an actual deficiency of vit C that is treated with vit C).

"Professor Goddard does not know the relation between action and reaction and the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react. He seems to lack the basic knowledge ladled out daily in high schools. – 1921 New York Times editorial about Robert Goddard’s revolutionary rocket work.
[Orac’s note: Why the New York Times would be considered an “expert” in rocketry such that it would be of interest to use it as an example of an “expert” making a statement that is later proven wrong, I have no idea. This quote is at best irrelevant.]"
Not merely was the NYT editorial writer not an expert in rocketry, he didn't even understand action and reaction. It's the fact that the rocket is pushing exhaust out the back (the action) that makes the rocket go forward (the reaction), not whether or not there is something else (air, say) to be pushed at by the rocket exhaust. Basic mechanics: conservation of momentum.

@W Kevin Vicklund #45: (love your gravatar b.t.w.)

Washington Irving (responsible for the false impression that Europeans believed in a flat earth before Columbus).

It was a surprise for me to learn that in the Middle Ages and before people knew the Earth was round. It's shocking how persistent that falsity is, even today.

I’d say few if any of them know enough math to be able to solve the Schrödinger equation for even a toy problem such as you find in undergraduate level textbooks.

Ahemm...Do you mean the Arthur Lunn equation?

not sure if you’re serious or not (not enough coffee yet here in New Jersey, USA), but WAG stands for wild-a**ed guess.

In English-speaking countries WAG is a term used to describe the female partners of members of sporting teams. It arose initially in the British tabloid press to refer to the partners of the English football team circa the time of Posh and Becks and has since been adopted by the tabloid press of Australia and New Zealand to collectively describe the partners of their male sporting teams.

It is often used in a slightly derogatory fashion.

MI Dawn @ 35

Thanks! That's a new one on me. I'd only ever come across the acronym in reference to the partners of the England football team.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WAGs

Not merely was the NYT editorial writer not an expert in rocketry, he didn’t even understand action and reaction.

Reminds me of the Internet movie reviewer who was gleefully slamming "The Core" for its scientific inaccuracy, and said that they were ignorant of what would really happen if the Earth's core stopped spinning (the premise of the film): gravity would stop and we'd all be flung off into space!

... It's one thing to be that wrong. It's another thing to be that wrong, and be sure at the same time that you are the one qualified to mock others for their wrongness.

@Chris Preston and Rebecca Fisher: and YOUR definition is one I'd never heard of! That's the way it goes...2 countries separated by the same language (I was an adult before I knew a "jumper" was a "sweater" in the USA. I kept reading books set in the UK and wondering why all those people were running around in (American version) jumpers...lol)

It’s the velocity that does it.

Do fuck off, Travis. Perhaps you could learn the difference between force and momentum while you're at it.

The good news is that Travis is really scraping the bottom of the barrel for old commenters whose addresses he can figure out. :-)

@Chris Preston and Rebecca Fisher: and YOUR definition is one I’d never heard of! That’s the way it goes…2 countries separated by the same language

Likewise for me--I've been a Yank all my life.

Another example: Several years ago I was informed by a British co-worker that "passing on the inside" is a major no-no in the UK. I thought: isn't that how you're supposed to do it? Of course, I assumed "inside" was with respect to the center line, which would mean passing on the left in countries where you drive on the right, and vice versa. In the UK "inside" is defined with respect to the curb (even on roads like motorways that do not have one). Once he explained that to me, the rule made a lot more sense.

Also, in the US you should always drive on the pavement, because that refers to the actual road surface. In the UK, you should never drive on the pavement (unless circumstances absolutely force you to do so), because that refers to what Americans call the sidewalk.

I've never run across that definition of WAG in Canada, but then I couldn't care less about football of any variety.

In the UK “inside” is defined with respect to the curb

I thought it was in the U.S., as well – one clear sign of being "outside" the flow of traffic is having oncoming vehicles in your windshield.

Do the mirrors work the same way over there?

@Narad: You are also "outside" the traffic flow if you are driving on the sidewalk, or on the shoulder (paved or otherwise) of a road that has one. (Except in Massachusetts, where the shoulder is generally called a "breakdown lane" and often used like a normal lane--in some cases this is even legal.)

Like many American drivers, I grew up in a suburban area, and like most suburban areas in the US, there were plenty of multilane highways--surface streets, not just freeways/motorways. Often these multilane surface roads are divided highways (dual carriageways, in UK parlance), where if you are looking at oncoming traffic, either you or the oncoming driver has seriously goofed. And of course almost all motorways have two or more separate roadways each with two or more travel lanes--at least in the US, the exceptions are rare (though I live in the state with the only single carriageway interstate outside Alaska, whose interstates are not freeways).

I hadn't paid much attention to the technical jargon of road design, beyond what I needed to know as a driver. My thought process was that "inside lane" means "fast lane", which is how the term is used in Olympic sports: in track and field, the expected fastest runners are normally assigned to the lanes closest to the center of the track, while in swimming, the expected fastest swimmers are assigned to lanes 4 and 5, in the center of an eight-lane pool. This is also the way the term is used colloquially, at least in the US: a person who has some advantage in a competition is said to have "the inside lane" or "the inside track".

I've never heard of WAG, but SWAG (scientific wild-a$$ guess) is common around here.

American English is just weird and stupid. Footpaths are pavements because they are paved (surfaced with flat stones or bricks). Roads are tarmacs.

@HDB: I dated an Aussie for a while, and he's the one who made me rather bi-lingual. By the time I met him, I'd figured out most car and tool terms I'd come across (bonnet, spanner) but I saw a "footpath" as a type of hiking trail, not a sidewalk until he cleared up that piece of confusion. But our first few dates had a lot of laughs when our words didn't mean the same thing!

Footpaths are pavements because they are paved (surfaced with flat stones or bricks).

Not in the US, they aren't. Most of the sidewalks in my town are paved with the same kind of stuff used on roads. Some of them are concrete surfaces (you see that on roads, too, but it's out of favor as such roads are more expensive to repair and maintain).

Those Shermer and Sagan quotes ("They laughed at...") are suspiciously similar. Anyone know whose came first?

@Jud:
I believe Sagan said it first. Shermer would have repeated it, giving credit to Sagan.
At least that's how I remember it.

Anyone know whose came first?

John Sladek from 1974 (in The New Apocrypha):

They laughed at Galileo, they laughed at Darwin, they laughed at Edison … and they laughed at Punch and Judy.

The apostolic chain of succession goes
1. Sladek (written 1973-74, published 1974). Objects of laughter: Galileo, Darwin, Edison; Punch & Judy.
2. Sagan (written as articles 1974-79; collected 1979). Objects of laughter: Columbus, Fulton, Wright brothers; Bozo the Clown.
3. Shermer (2002). Objects of laughter: Copernicus, Wright brothers; Marx Brothers.
4. Bailin & Battersby (2016). Objects of laughter: Copernicus, Wright Brothers, Snow's theory of cholera, homeopathy.

Extrapolation predicts that the next appearance of the trope will be in 2030, and will involve Ben Stiller.

Extrapolation predicts that the next appearance of the trope will be in 2030, and will involve Ben Stiller.

Not Jenny McCarthy? Fun fact: Ben Stiller's parents showed up at my wedding.

If someone has Orac's email address, please call him. Travis J Schwochert is being a total bellend again.

How popular is quackery? A Harris Poll answers: Very, particularly among Millennials!

oracknows — Wed, 11 May 2016 04:00:17 +0000

How popular is quackery? A Harris Poll answers: Very, particularly among Millennials!

One of the central messages that apologists for the use of alternative medicine and, particularly the integration of the unscientific and mystical treatment modalities of alternative medicine with real medicine—a phenomenon known as “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM) or, more recently, “integrative medicine”—is that it’s popular. Oh. So. Popular. If you believe the promoters of these modalities, CAM modalities are used by almost everyone and loved by nearly as many people. I exaggerate, but only a little. It’s basically an appeal to popularity, one of the ultimate logical fallacies. Whenever I hear such an argument, I like to cite Bertrand Russell’s famous admonition, “The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd: indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.”

Unfortunately, if a Harris Poll I just heard about yesterday from a press release for it that showed up in PR Newswire thusly, Health and Healing in America: Majorities See Alternative Therapies as Safe and Effective: Younger generations more readily embrace alternative treatments than their older counterparts, accurately reflects public opinion, then Russell's quip is correct about Americans' attitudes towards alternative medicine. A lot of really dumb ideas about medicine are widely held beliefs. (Here are the actual Harris Poll and the full 125 page report of the results.)

Let’s start with the summary in the press release:

For many, the term "healthcare" likely leads to visions of doctors and prescriptions, but for some it can mean so much more. Alternative treatments – also known as non-conventional or naturopathic therapies, which include things like chiropractic care, massage therapy, and herbal remedies – are used in place of or in addition to conventional therapies. Overall, younger people are more willing to embrace these alternative therapies and to use them more widely. In fact, one in four Millennials (25%) are using alternative therapies more than conventional options, compared to just 5% of Matures.

However, regardless of age, Americans are keeping an open mind when it comes to less conventional options. Two in three Americans view alternative therapies as safe (69%) and effective (63%), and half think they are reliable (50%). Even more strikingly, majorities think some alternative treatments, like chiropractic and massage therapy, should be covered by insurance – more than actually have used them. These findings appear to suggest an expanded consciousness on what health and healing mean to Americans – not just prescription medicine and doctors, but also having greater access to techniques that have been used for centuries to make people better.

"Though alternative treatments often predate modern medicine, consumer interest in these treatments today is bolstered by two important consumer trends: finding affordable care in a high deductible world, and seeking natural approaches to pain and disease management," adds Jennifer Colamonico, Vice President of Nielsen Healthcare. "As these trends are likely to continue for some time, we anticipate more consumers will consider and try alternative treatments as well as other types of self-care to achieve health and wellness goals."

One in four Millennials is using alternative therapies more than conventional options? I couldn’t help but think while reading that that it must be nice to be young. After all, younger people are far less likely to have chronic health conditions that require real medicine to prevent death or severe disability. If diet and exercise fail, good luck treating that hypertension and diabetes with woo instead of metformin and lisinopril! In any case, I wondered whether this answer was just a function of age, given how few Matures (I hate that term, by the way, which refers to people 70 years of age and older) use more alternative medicine than real medicine. I bet there's definitely an element of this, particularly given that the poll also found that higher percentages of people without health insurance use more alternative medicine and young people are more likely not to have health insurance—confounders, anyone?—but there's no older poll with the same methodology to compare to see if this number has changed.

Of course, when examining these polls, it’s very important to pay close attention to what is considered to be “alternative” medicine, particularly when there is a sky high estimate of what percentage of people have used alternative medicine before. So I dove into the full report to find out, and below are the specific therapies I found mentioned (percent reporting use in parentheses). This poll, as has been the case for most polls on alternative medicine use, includes modalities designed to inflate the numbers. In this report, for example, Harris surveyed 2,252 U.S. adults online between December 9 and 14, 2015, and found that 71% of Americans have used some kind of alternative therapy before:

Herbs/herbal medicines/vitamins (37%)
Chiropractic (34%)
Massage therapy/acupressure (29%)
Aromatherapy/essential oils (22%)
Meditation (20%)
Acupuncture (11%)
Electrotherapy (9%)
Reflexology(5%)
Hypnotherapy (4%)
Reiki/energy medicine (3%)
Cupping (3%)
Other (3%)

I found it rather odd that Harris left out two big ones in the world of alternative medicine, homeopathy and naturopathy. That surprised me, given how ubiquitous naturopathy seems to be and how homeopathy is an integral part of it. What didn’t surprise me is how the numbers are inflated with people who have used vitamins and herbal medicines (by that standard, I would probably be forced to say that I’ve used alternative medicine before in my life, at least based on the way the question is phrased), meditation, chiropractic, and massage therapy. The true woo, like reiki, cupping, and reflexology, are all in the low single digit percentages. Electrotherapy, of course, is nothing more than transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS), which isn’t really “alternative” at all, as I keep trying to remind people. On the other hand, this is the first time I’ve ever seen a poll where the percentage of people who have ever used acupuncture reached double digits, even just barely.

In actuality, this poll isn’t too far out of line with other polls that I’ve examined; the main difference between this on and many others that provide inflated numbers of people using alternative medicine is that this one doesn’t lump religion and spirituality in with alternative medicine. It does, however, suggest increases in the use of alternative medicine How valid the increases are, given the differences in methodology between polls, is not clear. For example, the percentage of people who’ve used chiropractic in this survey is higher than the previously reported percentage in the 2007 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) Complementary and Alternative Medicine supplement, where chiropractic and osteopathic manipulation was used by 22%. On the other hand, the NHIS reported 1.7% of respondents using energy medicine; this Harris Poll, 3%. Both are still low single digits, and with such low percentages, it’s hard to tell how comparable these numbers are, but both still report very low numbers.

A particularly annoying aspect of this poll is that it doesn't really define what is "alternative medicine" other than the modalities above and that it isn't "Western" and "conventional" medicine. That is, of course, the false dichotomy that has been driving me crazy for at least a decade. First of all, it's a racist construct. There's nothing inherently "Western" about scientific, conventional medicine any more than there is anything "Eastern" about woo. After all, The One Quackery To Rule Them All (homeopathy) was concocted by a German. It's "Western" medicine. Actually, it's "Western" medicine that's just as much woo as the "Eastern" medicine that is acupuncture is. Given its questions and how it fails to define alternative medicine adequately even for purposes of the poll, I can't help but think there was serious bias in the construction of this poll's questions.

That being said, as sloppy and obvious a bit of pro-alternative medicine propaganda as this Harris Poll is, I still can’t help but be troubled by its results, for a number of reasons. First, I really do think that it probably does reflect a change in attitude towards alternative medicine, particularly among the young. This result is quite plausible and would make sense if true. After all, most Millennials were either children or not yet born when alternative medicine was being transformed by advocates from quackery to CAM in the 1990s and moving from disreputable storefronts to being studied in highly respected academic medical centers who fell prey to the lure of quackademic medicine. Decades of “respectable” centers of quackademia relentlessly promoting the message that some alternative medicine “works” and advocating the “integration” of quackery with science-based medicine as an unabashed good, aided and abetted by the media regurgitating the same message because it comes from what are considered reliable and respectable sources, couldn’t help but have an effect on Millennials, who grew up never knowing anything different.

I often like to refer to a 1983 New England Journal of Medicine editorial that referred to much of “holistic medicine” (remember, this was before the terms “CAM” and “integrative medicine” had been coined) quite rightly as quackery. That’s ancient history, unfortunately. For the entire living memory of the Millennial generation, alternative medicine has not been widely referred to as quackery but rather in terms of weasel words designed to imply that “integrating” alternative medicine with real medicine is the “best of both worlds.” Why shouldn't they accept alternative medicine as effective and reliable? That's what they've been told their whole lives!

The result is this:

Majorities believe chiropractic (67%) and massage therapy (53%) should be covered by insurance. Nearly half say the same of acupuncture (48%), including about six in ten Matures (61%).

For the rest of the alternative therapies presented, less than one third think each should be covered by insurance:

Herbs/herbal medicines (30%)

Electrotherapy (23%)

Hypnotherapy (19%)

Reflexology (16%)

Meditation (15%)

Aromatherapy (13%)

Cupping (11%)

Reiki (9%)

I’m sure insurance companies would be overjoyed to pay for the glorified faith healing that is reiki substitutes Eastern mysticism for Christian beliefs and posits such obviously ridiculous ideas like healing over a distance. Then there’s reflexology, which posits nonexistent links between locations on the palms and soles and various organs in the body. It’s basically the idea that giving a good foot massage can cure disease.

Finally, this Harris Poll looks at the politics of alternative medicine:

In this political season, it is interesting to note that Independents are more likely to use alternative therapies as often as conventional therapies (23% vs. 13% Republican), and are specifically more likely than their Republican counterparts to use things like meditation (24% vs. 13% Republicans), massage therapy (34% vs. 26% Republicans) and herbal medicines (41% vs. 33% Republicans).

To be honest, when I read this but before I looked at the full report, I couldn’t help but wonder why Democrats weren’t mentioned. I checked and found that, most likely, it’s because there appears to be no difference between Democrats and Republicans in terms of their attitudes towards alternative medicine or between liberals and conservatives. Indeed, Republicans reported slightly more use of alternative medicine than Democrats, while liberals reported slightly more use than conservatives. I'm guessing that neither were statistically significant differences, given that they weren't mentioned in the summary.

One aspect of this poll that caught my attention is only visible if one dives into the actual full report. I’m referring to one of the later questions, in which respondents were asked to state how much they agree or disagree with certain statements. One finding that I have a hard time disagreeing with is the finding that 86% of respondents think that alternative treatments should be FDA-evaluated for safety and efficacy in a similar manner to conventional “Western” treatments. OK, it irritated the crap out of me that the poll used the term “Western treatments, as that particular term is pretty damned racist. After all, there is no “Western medicine” or “Eastern medicine” with respect to science-based medicine. There is medicine that has been shown to be safe and effective by science; there is medicine that has not been shown to be safe and effective, and there is medicine that has been shown not to be safe and effective. Guess which two categories alternative medicine falls into? Hint: It’s not the category of treatments that have been shown to be safe and effective by science.

As I contemplated the results of this survey, I had a hart time not being depressed and disturbed. After all, the poll showed that a large percentage of Americans have a disturbingly credulous attitude towards alternative medicine. Worse, this poll actually echoes the findings of a previous report pointing out Millennials’ proclivities towards alternative medicine. Worse, there was definitely a correlation between education and alternative medicine use, with people with postgraduate training reporting significantly more use of alternative medicine than those with a high school education or less.

As sloppy and disturbing as it is, this poll represents a snapshot, a single point in time. It doesn’t really tell us whether use of alternative medicine is increasing or decreasing. However, what is disturbing about its results is the high level of “openness” to alternative medicine respondents expressed, particularly Millennials. If this poll is an accurate representation of the American public’s beliefs with respect to alternative medicine, those of us who have dedicated our blogging to promoting and teaching critical thinking have a more difficult task ahead of us than we thought, because we're getting older and the most avid believers in woo are the youngest generation who will replace us.

oracknows Wed, 05/11/2016 - 00:00

Tags

complementary and alternative medicine

complementary and alternative medicine

medicine

Western medicine is a horrible term as it should include homeopathy and any other quackery invented in the western hemisphere. It is not the same thing at all as "conventional" medicine which is still a bad term. It should just be called medicine.

The other nice thing about this survey is that they did not include diet and nutrition as part of the alternative medicine which naturopaths try to do.

I also wonder if that is the real reason Democrats useage is not listed. My skepticism makes me think maybe the results would not have been flattering to the Democrats, so it was not mentioned.

Orac writes,

...those of us who have dedicated our blogging to promoting and teaching critical thinking have a more difficult task ahead of us than we thought.

MJD says,

The Mayo Clinic staff have a website that states:

Doctors are embracing CAM therapies, too, often combining them with mainstream medical therapies.

Why is there so little evidence about CAM?

The Mayo Clinic staff says:

One reason for the lack of research in alternative treatments is that large, carefully controlled medical studies are costly. Trials for conventional therapies are often funded by big companies that develop and sell drugs. Fewer resources are available to support trials of CAM therapies.

http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/consumer-health/in-depth/al…

@Orac,

You definitely have a difficult task ahead.

Fortunately, this is a self-solving problem. As the woo-loving millennials grow older, their favorite quackery will ensure their demise from easily treatable conditions. This wave of preventable deaths will lead to a resurgence in critical thinking and hopefully cause the pendulum to swing back to reality from fantasy for the survivors and their children.

Willful stupidity has no cure.

Don't give up, Orac. The good fight is eternal. http://www.skeptic.com/downloads/WhereDoWeGoFromHere.pdf

Quackery is popular, as is astrology. Astrology has always been more popular than astronomy. Science is not supposed to be popular. What is wrong is to measure science by popularity, media coverage, citation numbers and impact factor. I have no problem with quackery being more popular than science-based medicine, but I don't want numerology being part of science.

Actually, I'm mildly surprised that the method I probably hear/ read about most frequently in my travels is
diet and nutrition OR
'Let your food be your medicine'

Of course, I don't mean reality-based measures- which -btw- are vilified by woo-meisters- but the myriad forms of cures and treatments through particular diets, foods and phytochemical supplements.

-There are the extreme overarching plans like veganism or macrobiotics as well as fine tuning like organics, GMO free and 'clean' food**

-Then there are dietary restrictions like gluten free and casein free diets and paleo diets as well as ideas like juicing and nutrient dense liquid fasts. Recently, the microbiome and pre-/ pro-biotics to fix it are popular

- in addition, some woo-meisters sing the praises of particular phyto-nutrients that appear ( to their eyes at least) to be the miracle drugs of the future. Extracts of these kill cancer cells in vitro and thus, they're hailed as curative / preventive measures. They say "Eat a rainbow" which may be based on meaningful research but they inflate the effects and speculate unrealistically as they advocate high intake of Superfoods- greens, reds, blues, purples- selling containers of dried fruit or vegetable powders at high cost: after all, it's easier than eating a pint or two of berries a day.
Cruciferous foods, soy, mushrooms and garlic are amongst their most admired medicaments.
Another trend is ancient grains. Natural dairy products and meats are also coveted.

This is BIg Business and affects other enterprises like food markets and restaurants.

** as if we usually eat what has been tossed into dirt

@ Daniel Corcos

Astrology has always been more popular than astronomy.

Yes, but people don't ask rocket engineers to use astrology rather than astronomy.
It's not the comparative popularity which is an issue; it's the competitive popularity, the selection of one contestant over the others. It's the rejection of the one field somewhat grounded in reality in favor of another field which is mostly based on faerie dust.

"finding affordable care in a high deductible world, and seeking natural approaches to pain and disease management,” adds Jennifer Colamonico"

I would like her to explain ( or someone else ) the popularity for countries where there is no deductible for SBM, like Canada, England, France ...... and where altie is prevalent. And the use of the word "natural" indicates she has no idea what it means.

@ Helianthus
I see: competitive popularity= science; comparative popularity = quackery. Interesting.
Rather, I would say that astrology based rockets do not work, and this has nothing to do with popularity.

@ Daniel

Oh for FSM sake

By competitive, I mean there is room for only one. People ascribe to one candidate properties the other one doesn't have, and choose which one to adopt.
By comparative, I mean cats are more popular than cacti, but that doesn't stop people from having both.

I would say that astrology based rockets do not work

How do you know? No-one tried. Or they have been silenced by Big Rocket.

Let's try again:

My point was that astrology and astronomy address two separate fields of human interests, so there should be minimal effect of the popularity of one on the other.

Medicine and quackery, on the other hand, are in competition for the same issue - human health.

"Medicine and quackery, on the other hand, are in competition for the same issue – human health."
which does not prevent quackery to be very popular, and Boiron to be richer than you and me.

Homeopathy is considered herbal medicine by many millennials. Most "active" ingredients listed in homeopathic remedies are herbs of some kind. The fact that homeopathy was not listed separately implies that the people conducting the survey also considered homeopathy herbal medicine.

Mike beat me to it - I'm guessing homeopathy isn't mentioned because it's lumped in with "herbs/herbal medicines/vitamins." Like most polls of this type, the results are essentially meaningless because it ignores the real distinction between "conventional" and "alternative" medicine (i.e., treatments that have been shown to work versus those that haven't) and instead focuses on superficialities: conventional medicine = lab coats and pharmaceuticals; alternative medicine = pretty much anything related to well-being that doesn't require a prescription, especially if it seems vaguely foreign or New Age-y. Most of their more popular categories are so broad that they could include both conventional and alternative treatments, plus some non-therapeutic self-care behaviors for good measure. There's a big difference between someone who takes a doctor-recommended vitamin supplement for a diagnosed deficiency vs someone who thinks mega-doses of vitamin C will cure their cancer; ditto getting a stress-relieving massage vs using acupressure to treat your allergies, ditto relaxing in a lavender-scented bath vs snorting tee tree oil to treat sinusitis.

re mine above:

that should be
I surprised that they left out food as medicine, dietary woo

WAS surprised

Sorry, no sleep last night

Correction with errors.

I wonder what would have happened if they'd left US millenials out of the poll. I can't help thinking that health insurance has a lot to do with it. As I may have mentioned, because of insurance concerns, I have refused emergency treatment after being hit by a car, left a sprained ankle untreated except for cold compresses, and chosen to treat a self-inflicted knife wound (cooking accident) by myself rather than getting stitches. (Though on that one, I got medical advice from a passing nurse.)

I would say that astrology based rockets do not work

Why wouldn't they, Daniel Corcos #9? Astrology deals in assigning meaning to the relative positions of heavenly bodies at given points of time. There is nothing about astrology that counters orbital dynamics -- Carried to a sufficient temporal and spacial precision, there most certainly could be Astrology-navigated rocketry.

Perhaps Elan Musk will deliver a new age rocket named Aquarius with acceptable mission parameters to include "when the moon is in the Seventh House
and Jupiter aligns with Mars..."

@Ross Miles #8:

I would like her to explain ( or someone else ) the popularity for countries where there is no deductible for SBM, like Canada, England, France

I found this BBC-commissioned survey for the UK from 1999. There's also one published in 2010 based on 2005 data which suggests that growth hasn't been that great since then. The overall numbers aren't as high as for the US.

Politicalguineapig

Do I detect an appeal for universal health care?

Insurance / out of pocket concerns is part of the puzzle, but think it is far more complex.

@ Ross Miles #8 - Not to mention many CAM modalities are quite expensive - so much so that in some locales weekly acupuncture or Reiki sessions seem to be a sort of status symbol.

Through a related search, I found a 2015 article by Elizabeth Crawford called "Five strategies for marketing to millennials"
which might be of interest. ( altho' it's about food)

Insurance / out of pocket concerns is part of the puzzle

Here in the US, this is a major concern, to a far greater extent than most people who have never lived here realize.

I had occasion to visit the emergency room of the nearest hospital a few months ago. The bill was more than US$700: $100 to walk in the door, and $600 to be treated for the condition that prompted my visit. This does not include the cost of x-rays, which (as is common in the US) was billed separately. I have no reason to think these charges are excessive for this part of the US.

Couple that with a survey indicating that 47% of Americans do not have enough cash on hand to cover a $400 emergency expense, such as an emergency room visit or a car breakdown.

So far, most forms of woo are not covered by insurance. There are sound actuarial reasons for that, such as that these treatments have never been shown to be both safe and effective. But insurance is subject to state regulations which can sometimes override actuarial concerns. Sometimes this is a good thing (e.g., requiring insurers to offer coverage for pre-existing conditions), but in principle states can require insurers to cover woo. For instance, it is a lot harder to justify the actuarially sound position of not covering treatments by naturopaths in a state where naturopaths are licensed.

Gilbert@17: Astrology is based on a belief that the positions of the planets influence individual people's lives. It's entirely magical thinking. There is no plausible mechanism (other than inspiring somebody to study astronomy, planetology, or science in general) that would allow for a different influence of any planet on two different people on Earth. As Carl Sagan pointed out, the gravitational force between you and the obstetrician attending your birth was greater than the gravitational force between you and Jupiter, because the obstetrician was so much closer to you.

I'd rather leave rocket construction to people who use astronomy and physics in the design, thank you.

@ Eric
That's why good astrologists must know the position of the obstetrician.

""Herbs/herbal medicines/vitamins (37%)

Of course, 'herbs' would include use of cannabis?

With Leni’s Law, citizens in Alabama will have access to cannabidiol that may help with treatment. Through a study at UAB, we have seen the benefit of cannabidiol to help with chronic seizures. I hope we will be able to collect information that will determine the efficacy of this substance in other chronic debilitating diseases.

-- Govener Robert Bently, Alabama

http://whnt.com/2016/05/04/gov-bentley-passes-lenis-law-providing-relie…

Seizures, huu? I note the particularly hepatotoxic valproic acid (Depakote™) is an anti-seizure prescribed off-label as a 'mood stabilizer'.

Bentley is an asshole:

A number of district attorneys across North Alabama are issuing public notices that Kratom is now illegal statewide. This includes the sale and possession of Kratom or any product containing Kratom. If you’re caught with it, you face felony charges.

http://whnt.com/2016/05/11/kratom-now-illegal-in-alabama-law-enforcemen…

^^That sux. I've been meaning to try that.

Its leaves are used for a variety of potential medicinal effects, but mainly to manage pain and/or anxiety and alcohol dependence. Though not an opiate itself, kratom is thought to behave similarly to an μ-opioid receptor agonist like morphine, and thus is purported for managing chronic pain, as well as a recreational drug. Kratom use is not detected by typical drug screening tests, but its metabolites can be detected by more specialized testing. The pharmacological effects of kratom on humans, including its efficacy and safety, are not well-studied...

...The ONCB concluded that decades of non-problematic use, and an absence of health and social harm, make prohibiting the leaf unnecessary and counterproductive. According to the ONCB's report, kratom was in fact banned for economic reasons, not for health or social concerns.

In Thailand, kratom was first scheduled for control in 1943 under the Kratom Act. At the time, the government was levying taxes from users and shops involved in the opium trade. Because of the increasing opium costs, many users were switching to kratom to manage their withdrawal symptoms. However, the launch of the Greater East Asia War in 1942 and declining revenues from the opium trade pushed the Thai government into action to curb and suppress competition in the opium market by making kratom illegal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitragyna_speciosa#Proposed_decriminaliza…

This is not 'woo'. It is another example of efficatious natural herbs butting up against more toxic offerings of Big Pharma. What's next? Passion flower**?

**It is already effectively wiped out through the ever increasing use of 2-4-d and glyphosate mixtures which drift (volatile) for thousands of feet. It's impossible to grow in a lawn on a small scale because there is one species of butterfly that the larvae only feed on passiflora incarnata -- They remember where they're born so if one's got the only plants within a square mile...; Insecticide is not an option because the aereal parts of the plant are to be made into a tincture for treatment of insomnia and anxiety. Besides, the butterflies are pretty.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_fritillary

Has anyone done an authoritative survey to determine if millennials are more or less prone than other generations to believing wackoid conspiracy theories?

Meantime, our fearless Reptilian host has been outed yet again by a certain loon as a Psychological Terrorist who preys on women. More proof, that (as another article reveals), Demons Walk Among Us.

And some of them have really cool tattoos.

Sarah A: Not to mention many CAM modalities are quite expensive – so much so that in some locales weekly acupuncture or Reiki sessions seem to be a sort of status symbol.

That's another part of it, true, and might factor into alternative medicine's popularity in other countries. Many European teens and young adults adopt US trends. Also there's the fact that European health care ain't what it used to be, especially since politicians are eager to dismantle it. It's kind of funny that people are taking pot-shots at the health services at the same time that immigrants and refugees are flooding into European countries.

Ross Miles: Universal health care is a good idea, but it simply is never gonna happen in the US, unless we suddenly lose a whole lot of states, or the non-white population takes a dive. Simply put the US is too large and too racist (up until the last few years it was getting better, but I suspect the Klan and other conglomerations of the dim will outlive me) for universal health care to ever take hold here, despite the ACA or Bernie Sanders. The places where universal health care has worked best (Japan, Scandanavia) have by and large been small, homogeneous countries. It's easier to love the poor when they look the same as the rich. Canada's health care system is a weird anomaly.

When I worked with a team of about a dozen millenials, I didn't find them to be into consipiracy theories. What I did see was a deference to those who they looked up to and who spoke with conviction (especially Hollywood entertainers and the press) or those in direct authority over them.

Why? I don't know. Maybe it made their lives easier to be directed by others than to invest in the thinking things through. I will say that it really helped them in the business world to blindly follow managers.

Politicalguineapig

"Canada’s health care system is a weird anomaly."

How so?

I found it interesting that the survey showed a decreasing percentage of those who use altmed stuff as education increased.

There have been studies that show somewhat higher than average education associated with ideas like being anti-vaccine.

Meantime, our fearless Reptilian host has been outed yet again by a certain loon as a Psychological Terrorist who preys on women.

Mikey is also hilariously off target in invoking Welch. Like, RLY.

Unfortunately not enough time to be thorough. I had a brief look at the last study from 2010 provided by Rich Woods @18. The Orac Harris poll and a Canadian one, “Use of complementary and alternative medicine by those with a chronic disease and the general population” ( BMC Complement Altern Med. 2010; 10: 58. Published online 2010 Oct 18. doi: 10.1186/1472-6882-10-58 ) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2967501/

Then I took use of acupuncture as an example, or a back of the napkin indicator. The Harris poll stated 11%, the British 11.2% and Canada 18.3%. Also in Canada, the higher the income and education, the greater the use. The British study shows an almost equal amount in the lowest quartile and highest for income. ( 29.5 vs 29.2 )

Another Canadian study ( Sirois FM. Motivations for consulting complementary and alternative medicine practitioners: a comparison of consumers from 1997-8 and 2005. BMC Complement Altern Med. 2008;8:16. doi: 10.1186/1472-6882-8-16. ) examining why patients chose to use CAM services found that while the most commonly reported reasons that patients used CAM services were that these services allowed them to take a more active role in their health and they identified with the holistic approach. Additionally, 40.1% of respondents reporting using CAM services because they had problems communicating with their medical doctor, and approximately two-thirds of respondents reported that conventional medicine was not effective for their particular health issue, that they were desperate, and were at a point where they were willing to try anything.

This is like a stone skipping over the water, but does indicate the complexity.

Also there’s the fact that European health care ain’t what it used to be, especially since politicians are eager to dismantle

The Conservative Party's project of dismantling the NHS in the UK is something of a special case.

As a millenial (ugh) I would be in that 71%. Because I take the calcium supplement that my (real) doctor recommends, because I sometimes eat a ginger candy if my tummy feels weird, because I once tried hypnotherapy as a form of mental health treatment (as a minor). I've gotten a massage at a spa. I've considered massage for post-race muscle soreness. I've put lavender-scented salts in a bath to relax.

I mean, when you define "alt med" that broadly I think almost everyone would count.

(Then again there were the people on my Facebook this week who recommended homeopathic teething tablets and acupuncture to induce labor. Gah!)

HDB,

Are you in the UK? I don't doubt that the ability for the common people to handle more taxes is strained right now and that is why politicians have chosen to slash and burn within the NHS. But where do you see the money to run it coming from?

Not a trick question - I just seriously doubt that taxes trickle down in the government anymore than wealth does in commerce.

Ross: Big country, big population and multiracial- the same things that would doom all efforts in the US. Basically, your health care is the bumblebee of government system according to my metrics.

HDB: How so?

Also, as a general question, did the survey distinguish between people who were taking vitamins or supplements for medical reasons and people who were taking them just because? There are some supplements that do get prescribed- I keep being told to take iron.

Oh, don't get me started. I've got quite a few millennial/young Gen X friends who totally buy into this crap, slavishly following the faddy diets ("I'm gluten-intolerant ... oh, yes, a pizza is an excellent idea" "I don't do dairy ... oh yes, milk in my tea, please"), who earnestly recommend acupuncture and homeopathy for my migraines (thanks, I'll stick with the sumatriptan), who don't trust "western" medicine with their special-snowflake ailments ("oh, western doctors don't have tests sensitive enough to diagnose my condition") and who seem to be allergic to everything under the sun ("I only use organic soap; ordinary soap makes my allergies flare up") etc etc. And they're often antivax, too, or rather "oh, I'm pro-vax, I just want vaccinations to be safe").

*and breathe*

A lot of people will be forced by economic circumstances to try non-conventional medicine and nutritional remedies. Their lack of accurate information is what often keeps them from succeeding.

At this point we are fairly well prepared to do stuff at home where it is simply quicker, cheaper and healthier despite HMO coverage with 0 deductible (the coverage isn't that great).

HDB,
Are you in the UK?

Not living there at the moment, so I am relying on reading the Graudiad and similar. But I think a case can be made that whether deliberately or not, Tory policies amount to engineering crises within the NHS,/A>, for which the only cure will be partial privatisation.

HDB: How so?
Where else in Europe are countries shifting towards a pure-market model of healthcare?

To complement Dangerous Bacon's report on the 'Demons' amongst us, I present a video of ( via the Bolen Report blog) Del Bigtree in pursuit of Dr Pan whom he chased down the stairways and halls of a ( most likely) Sacramento state office building

I didn't see Del in possession of a stake ( pointed stick) though.. Maybe Andy had it.

HDB:France seems poised to shift over to privatization. Germany might follow.

Politicalguineapig @36

Since the subject of healthcare systems is out of thread, the Wiki entry is pretty good.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_Canada

In the USA it will be a slow, gradual process, unfortunately.

“How popular is quackery? A Harris Poll answers: Very, particularly among Millennials!”

Maybe much of this is due to Millennials being probably the least-educated, poorest critical thinking generation in the last century or so.

P.S.
“Least-educated” has nothing to do with the number of years in school.

A bit off topic, but this appeared in the Yahoo news thing and I'm just waiting for the anti-vax mob to jump all over it:

http://www.upi.com/Health_News/2016/05/11/Babys-immune-system-might-hin…

SN: Mind your own glass house bub. It's not like you're all that smart. Then again, you do outsource your thinking, so maybe you just chose the wrong priest.

Ross Miles:In the USA it will be a slow, gradual process, unfortunately.
More like never.

Maybe it is a plea for socialised health care.

We have no shortage of woo here in Australia, but at least you can see a GP for free whereas a quack will cost you over $100, you can get part of that back if you have private health insurance.

A friend's daughter was constipated and, frustrated with it not getting better with OTC stuff, she said to me, maybe I should take her to a naturopath? I snorted and said - how about I just give you some common sense advice with some hippy shit thrown in and you give me the $200?
She did not go to a naturopath.

"Those of us who have dedicated our blogging to promoting and teaching critical thinking have a more difficult task ahead of us than we thought, because we’re getting older and the most avid believers in woo are the youngest generation who will replace us."

Don't worry, I'm young AND I don't believe in woo. I'll help :)

Maybe this is a purely European thing, but I can tell you that growing up I always heard variations on the idea that "natural medicine" is less dangerous go essentially unchallenged, with people who go against it getting accused of arrogance and intolerance. I've seen science authors who dared speak out against e.g. state funding for homeopathy, or CAM courses being required for certain pharmaceutical science degrees, get raked over the coals on talk shows, invited over only to be ignored and talked over while self-righteous CAM practitioners went on at length about how evil medicine is and how people should avoid vaccination.

Maybe much of this is due to Millennials being probably the least-educated, poorest critical thinking generation in the last century or so.

We already know the answer, but: Do you have any evidence, aside from your bigoted and always ignorant opinion, to support this?

P.S.
“Least-educated” has nothing to do with the number of years in school.

Since you are the least-educated person posting on science blogs, yet you have an "elite Ivy League education", this statement does apply to you.

Why Millennials play footsie with quackery.

1) They're still young enough that they heal up pretty quickly on their own, from most of the bumps, bruises, and infections of their peer-group. "I got better faster, so this QuackyQuap must have worked!"

2) Having graduated from college with a mortgage's worth of nondischargeable debt, into a job market that's like a cutting-room-floor clip from Soylent Green, they just =know= in their guts that they can't afford to get sick and can't afford to get well. So they "go underground" and become susceptible to BS conspiracy theory about "Western [sic!] medicine" and think they're out-smarting someone. It's one part desperation, one part denial, and one part defensiveness.

-----

Hellanthus @ 10:

"I would say that astrology based rockets do not work

How do you know? No-one tried. Or they have been silenced by Big Rocket."

That is just brilliant and an instant viral meme, that I will spread far & wide, early & often.

---

Politicalgunieapig @ 16: Yes, that. "Hospitalbillaphobia" nearly cost me my life once.

---

Ross @ 19: Yes, you detect a desire for social democracy and a culture that is sane, humane, and sustainable. We believe that an economy is a tool for meeting human needs. And that humans are not food for feeding an economy.

The idea of all these companies fighting tooth and nail against "single payer" means they're really fighting over the job of being "the payer," in other words the guy who writes the check.

You'd think that "payers" are close to God or something, how popular is that job description.

But the explanation is a lot more prosaic: If you're the "payer," you get to skim some creamy-cream off the top for yourself. It's pure parasitism, to the point where the public are suffering from flea anemia.

Fifty years ago:

"What do you want to be when you grow up?"

"I want to be a surgeon, so I can save peoples' lives and make them better."

Today:

"What do you want to be when you grow up?"

"I want to be a =payer= so I can write lots of checks and skim a percentage."

(Pardon me while I throw up.)

The cure for quackery is single-payer. If someone wants magical hand-waving or guru-water, they can pay out of pocket. Or let the private insurers cover that stuff. They can be the "payers" they've always wanted to be, and reap a fat profit on people choosing miracle-baloney and dropping dead early as a result. Think of the savings on end-of-life care!

Dean: I'm pretty sure that the closest SN ever got to an Ivy League school was a day trip to Boston once. He doesn't sound rich enough or smart enough to have ever passed the admissions test, and he's definitely not one of the Bush sons. (Then again George W. Bush went to Yale and learned nothing. His parents should have spent that money on someone who would benefit.)

Gray Squirrel: We believe that an economy is a tool for meeting human needs. And that humans are not food for feeding an economy.

What's this 'we' you speak of? Most Americans are just fine with being economy food- even the Trumpsters. Also, did you get hacked?

In 2013, doctors wrote nearly 207 million prescriptions for narcotic painkillers, up from around 76 million in 1991, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Much of this was due to the pharmaceutical industry's lobbying and PR campaign, led by Purdue Pharmaceutical, to boost the use of narcotics. (Purdue would ultimately plead guilty to misleading the public about the addiction risk posed by the painkiller OxyContin, and pay a $634.5 million fine.)

But like many people who get addicted, Ash wasn't aware of her problem. She had a legitimate need for the pills, and didn't realize what they were doing to her until it was too late...

Ash entered treatment in 2011. She successfully detoxed, and for a number of years continued in recovery with the help of buprenorphine**, a medication used to treat opioid addiction...That's when Ash discovered kratom, first as a way to help deal with the symptoms of withdrawal, and then as a replacement for other medications.

"Life couldn't have been much worse at that point. I was not leaving the house at all. I was only leaving the house to see doctors," she said. "In a matter of two weeks, I had the energy, I had the pain relief and I had the depression and anxiety relief I needed to become a productive member of society again. It was such a stark difference and such an immediate change in my life."

...Jag Davies, director of communications strategy at the Drug Policy Alliance, says he's skeptical of the desire to ban kratom. He sees it as a function of the "treatment industrial complex," which he says is profiting from treatment-instead-of-incarceration policies that funnel clients from the criminal justice system into programs that aren't based on science, such as abstinence-only and 12-step.

... "Determining success by boiling it down to this single measure of abstinence to this arbitrary group of certain drugs isn't realistic or effective."

...Ash says that although she hopes the FDA will stop cracking down on kratom, she doesn't see a path toward more mainstream medical acceptance. Clinical testing and FDA trials require huge financial investments, and considering the product in question is a plant that's likely been around for millions of years, pharmaceutical companies wouldn't see any way to make money from it. In fact, broader use of the plant as an alternative treatment would presumably take away from their bottom line.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/kratom-ban-drug-policy_us_56c38a87e…

As with most windmills that ^^ bad policy will also chop up birds.

** Buprenorphine is definately now a 'drug of abuse' with friends advising each other to "pee dirty" as the only condition necessary to obtain a prescription.

@ PGP:

Ha ha, day trip to Boston.

It's even worse than that:
George W. went to both Yale and Harvard - the latter for a graduate degree, an MBA, iIRC One of his economics profs there has discussed his 'abilities' extensively.

I am very .very dubious about these kind of survey. The wording is, I think, rather misleading.

At a glance, for example. I would likely answer "yes" on having use three of these modalities:

Herbs/herbal medicines/vitamins
I have migraines. As many with migraines, I have nausea. I have found that drinking ginger root infuse helps tremendously. So yes, I can be said to use "herbs" once a month, though I had never gone to a quack doctor to my knowledge.

Massage therapy/acupressure
Massages are a pleasure of mine when I can afford one. Not for any other reason than to relax, but on reading the list I would likely put "yes" on whenever I do this.

Aromatherapy/essential oils
When I come back from work I usually light a scented vanilla candle. It relaxes me and I like the smell. Do I think it heals something? Nah, it just smells nice. But again, I do use this.

Most people don't know what quacks mean with these things. Granted, for some like reiki, it is clear, but others are more vague. By choice, I would say.

I can recall my frustration while arguing about homeopathy with my SO (early on in our courtship) when she criticized the healthcare system and lack of affordable insurance as if that justified alternative BS. We're both 'millenials' btw, and here's my anecdotal contribution: you can sell a millenial anything, as long as it's an alternative to SOMETHING.

@Politicalguineapig

I agree with you, but when he first festered up on Evolution Blog, arguing about the "overwhelming historical and factual evidence" supporting the history and prophecies of the bible, he stated, when his background was questioned, that he had such an educational background.

As you, I don't believe it, but he said it.

DW: George W. went to both Yale and Harvard – the latter for a graduate degree, an MBA, iIRC One of his economics profs there has discussed his ‘abilities’ extensively.

Dubya's parents didn't learn their lesson from the first four years? Ouch, why didn't they just put the appropriate amount of money in the garbage bin? And link to the poor econ professor's article please? I'm sure it's glorious..
Dean: I wondered where the Ivy League thing came from. Given poor SN's inability to come to terms with the 20th century (and yes I know, it's the 21st century now), and general inability, one of those mail-order Christian colleges seemed more likely. Besides, I thought conservatives hate the Ivy League.

T. My sympathy for your struggle with migraines. My little sister had them bad as a kid, and she used to drink feverfew for it. At least ginger's tasty.

@ PGP:

I don't remember the prof's name- it was Japanese though. I saw him on television. He spoke publicly about George's lack of concern for people who were impoverished during the depression and that he wasn't exactly brilliant. I think the gentleman taught historical perspectives on economics. Let me see if I can find him.

Got it.
He's Yoshi Tsurumi, now at Baruch College. See Salon of Sept 2004 : The Dunce, Mary Jacoby

DW: Thanks.

** Buprenorphine is definately now a ‘drug of abuse’ with friends advising each other to “pee dirty” as the only condition necessary to obtain a prescription.

It gets abused in part because it helps stave off withdrawal in addicts who can't otherwise afford actual treatment. The high from Bupe for opioid addicts is not that tremendous, though it does have the benefit of being somewhat more difficult upon which to overdose.

PGP @ 52:

No, I didn't get hacked, what gave you that impression? I'm down with a nasty cold right now, so I'm feeling loosey-goosey enough to let my social democrat flag fly.

---

Speaking of nasty colds, I've been treating this one with one of my favorite "natural remedies" (read: feel-good placebos), plenty of chicken soup. With rice, with noodles, with carrots, etc. It doesn't kill the virus but it does make my throat feel better for a little while.

This is a highly-contagious (a cough in a grocery line), long-lasting infection (2 weeks), it is not the flu (I got the shot months ago), and it occasionally produces bronchitis (two cases in my larger social circle). If anyone here knows anything about it, I'm all ears.

Oh, and a friend of mine has been suggesting various herbs. Diplomacy entails being recognizing his desire to be helpful while indicating my skepticism.

Is it coincidence, Delphine #62, that a substance used for pain and opiate withdrawal is being banned concurrently with Congress' tough talk on pain pills? Is it coincidence that Thialand outlawed kratom to protect opium revenues?

In Thailand, kratom was first scheduled for control in 1943 under the Kratom Act. At the time, the government was levying taxes from users and shops involved in the opium trade. Because of the increasing opium costs, many users were switching to kratom to manage their withdrawal symptoms. However, the launch of the Greater East Asia War in 1942 and declining revenues from the opium trade pushed the Thai government into action to curb and suppress competition in the opium market by making kratom illegal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitragyna_speciosa#Proposed_decriminaliza…

Only this time the revenue stream to be protected will be a flood of Suboxone/Buprenorphine as windfall prescription pharmaceutical solutions to a pharmaceutical manufactued crises -- There are going to be waves of jonesing poppers of percocet, hydrocodone, ..., oxycontin who will be denied any 'alternative' to more odious prescription-wall 'therapy'.

Synthesis
Thesis
Antithesis

~create a problem, demonstrate the problem, offer the solution which was not previously acceptable.

How convienient.

Gray Squirrel: You're normally a lot calmer and a lot less prone to typos. That's why I wondered. That cold's been getting a lot of mileage lately- I know of at least seven people that got laid low by it. (Six of whom I know in real life, the other is an artist I follow on the net.) I'm sorry to hear it got you too.

Crashing waves, even.

My favorite spitoon for an edit function.

I didn't know where else to put this.
http://www.bdlive.co.za/life/health/2016/07/20/live-purpose-driven-live…

PEOPLE who live purpose driven, spiritual lives without stressing about fancy cars or homes, can eat what they like and need not go to the gym, says television doctor Dr Partha Nandi.

**VOMIT**

Fixing peer review

oracknows — Mon, 28 Dec 2015 07:00:44 +0000

Fixing peer review

I've frequently noted that one of the things most detested by quacks and promoters of pseudoscience is peer review. Creationists hate peer review. HIV/AIDS denialists hate it. Anti-vaccine cranks like those at Age of Autism hate it. Indeed, as blog bud Mark Hoofnagle Mark Hoofnagle, pointed out several years ago, pseudoscientists and cranks of all stripes hate it. There's a reason for that, of course, namely that it's hard to pass peer review if you're peddling pseudoscience, although, unfortunately, with the rise of "integrative medicine," it's nowhere near as difficult as it once was.

Be that as it may, peer review, the process by which scientific papers are evaluated by scientific "peers" to look for problems with the science and decide if the paper is appropriate for publication in a scientific journal, is a concept that dates back hundreds of years. However, for the most part, before the middle of the 20th century, the ultimate determination of whether a paper was appropriate for scientific publication was made by editors or editorial committees. Opinions of external reviewers were sometimes sought when deemed appropriate by journal editors, but by no means was this the practice for most manuscripts. Over the last six or seven decades, external peer review by scientists chosen by the journal editor evaluating a submission has become the standard. Similarly, decisions regarding whether or not to fund grant applications are now generally made by a panel of external reviewers. In the case of the NIH, these panels are called study sections and consist of scientists with expertise in the types of applications being referred to the study section for evaluation, along with (usually) a statistician or two and officials from the NIH who take care of organizing and running the meetings of the panel. The scientific members of a study section usually include "permanent" members, who are assigned to fixed terms on the study section, and ad hoc members, called in for one or a few meetings as needed and deemed necessary by the NIH.

I've not infrequently stolen the words from one of Winston Churchill's speeches to describe our current peer review system:

Many forms of Government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.

Simply substitute the words "scientific evaluation" for "Government" and "peer review" for democracy, and you get my drift. Peer review is, like many any system devised by human beings, imperfect. Scientists know that it is not perfect or all-wise. Indeed, scientists probably complain about peer review more than anyone else, because we have to deal with it many times a year, either as applicants, authors, or peer reviewers. Of course, to the pseudoscientists and quacks we routinely discuss here, peer review is viewed as the equivalent of the Cerberus guarding the gates of Hades (the Underworld) preventing the spirits of the dead from escaping, except in this case, "escape" means breaking out of the crank journals and bottom-feeding "pay-to-publish" open access journals and getting their work published in a real scientific journal. OK, OK, I know it's not a perfect metaphor, but peer review isn't a perfect process; so I'll use it anyway. Besides, if you're a scientist trying to get a paper published and have had to deal with clueless peer reviewers, the image of the peer review process as a giant three-headed dog has undeniable appeal, given that most scientific papers are assigned to three reviewers.

I've been thinking about writing another somewhat general post about peer review at least since August, but, since then, something always seemed to manage to catch my interest when Sunday blogging time rolled around. (Truly, I am Dug the Dog when it comes to blogging.) I figured the topic would keep for another week. Then, last week's New England Journal of Medicine featured a Perspective article by Charlotte Haug entitled "Peer-Review Fraud — Hacking the Scientific Publication Process", complete with an accompanying interview with her. I'm sure I'll be seeing this article featured on quack websites very soon. That is, what we call in the biz, an "in." So I dusted off the list of web pages I had been carefully hoarding at least since summer. Let's dig in.

Hacking Cerberus

Quacks love it when scientists complain about peer review because they think that those complaints validate their conspiratorial belief system about "close-minded" scientists trying to "suppress" their views. Of course, our pointing out the shortcomings of the peer review system are generally intended as a starting point from which either to improve the existing system or to discuss potential alternative systems to replace it, not as agreeing that pseudoscience should be published in scientific journals. We know that science depends on transparency and honesty; if those are compromised, the trustworthiness of science itself can be compromised. In any event, beginning a few months ago, advocates of various pseudoscientific forms of medicine started circulating certain articles quoting them, citing these articles as evidence that science is irretrievably corrupt, broken, biased, or close-minded (take your pick of any or all), the implication being, of course, that their preferred form of quackery has legitimacy but is being unfairly excluded from the scientific literature by the peer review process.

In her article, Haug notes a disturbing trend in peer review, specifically peer review evaluations that are outright fraudulent. Noting that in August, Springer retracted 64 articles from ten different journals "after editorial checks spotted fake email addresses, and subsequent internal investigations uncovered fabricated peer review reports." Later, BioMed Central, also owned by Springer, retracted 43 articles for exactly the same reason, Haug notes:

"This is officially becoming a trend," Alison McCook wrote on the blog Retraction Watch, referring to the increasing number of retractions due to fabricated peer reviews.² Since it was first reported 3 years ago, when South Korean researcher Hyung-in Moon admitted to having invented e-mail addresses so that he could provide "peer reviews" of his own manuscripts, more than 250 articles have been retracted because of fake reviews — about 15% of the total number of retractions.

How is it possible to fake peer review? Moon, who studies medicinal plants, had set up a simple procedure. He gave journals recommendations for peer reviewers for his manuscripts, providing them with names and e-mail addresses. But these addresses were ones he created, so the requests to review went directly to him or his colleagues. Not surprisingly, the editor would be sent favorable reviews — sometimes within hours after the reviewing requests had been sent out. The fallout from Moon's confession: 28 articles in various journals published by Informa were retracted, and one editor resigned.³

When I first found out about "fake" peer review, I had a hard time believing it. The main reason I was so incredulous was because I couldn't believe that journal editors would be so clueless as to let something like this happen. After all, most peer reviewers work at either university or government facilities; if you see, for example, a manuscript submission with suggested peer reviewers with Gmail, Hotmail, or Yahoo! accounts (or any account not using the domain name of the university or institution for where that peer reviewer works), you'd think that would at least raise a red flag to look a bit more closely. Yes, I know that some scientists might use their home e-mail addresses, but at the very least a non-university or non-institutional e-mail address should lead the editor to take a closer look. Most scientists' e-mail addresses are locatable through their university's website or by looking up the most recent papers they've published as corresponding author; in the case of industry it's more difficult but not insurmountable.

Unfortunately, given how relatively easy it is (or should be) to detect the kind of fake peer reviewers mentioned above, some researchers have become more sophisticated in their peer review fraud:

Peter Chen, who was an engineer at Taiwan's National Pingtung University of Education at the time, developed a more sophisticated scheme: he constructed a "peer review and citation ring" in which he used 130 bogus e-mail addresses and fabricated identities to generate fake reviews. An editor at one of the journals published by Sage Publications became suspicious, sparking a lengthy and comprehensive investigation, which resulted in the retraction of 60 articles in July 2014.

It goes beyond even a researcher creating his own "peer review and citation ring." There exist companies that offer manuscript preparation services to authors. Many are reputable and exist to help with editing and figure preparation. Some provide ghost writing services. Others, as this Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) statement reports, offer services that include fabricated contact details for peer reviewers to be used during the submission process plus reviews from these fabricated addresses. COPE notes that some of these "peer reviewers" have "the names of seemingly real researchers but with email addresses that differ from those from their institutions or associated with their previous publications" and that "others appear to be completely fictitious." COPE notes that it's not clear how much the authors of manuscripts submitted using such services know, specifically whether they know that the reviewer names and e-mail addresses are fraudulent. My response to this is "Oh, really?"

It goes beyond even this, though, as a more detailed report of Hyung-In Moon's and Peter Chen's fraud documented in Nature. Moon and Chen both exploited a flaw at the heart of Thomson Reuters' ScholarOne, a publication-management system used by quite a few publishers. Again, it's a flaw so unbelievably obvious that, in this era of concern about identify theft and cyber-crime, it's incredible that this is how ScholarOne works:

Moon and Chen both exploited a feature of ScholarOne's automated processes. When a reviewer is invited to read a paper, he or she is sent an e-mail with login information. If that communication goes to a fake e-mail account, the recipient can sign into the system under whatever name was initially submitted, with no additional identity verification. Jasper Simons, vice-president of product and market strategy for Thomson Reuters in Charlottesville, Virginia, says that ScholarOne is a respected peer-review system and that it is the responsibility of journals and their editorial teams to invite properly qualified reviewers for their papers.

So, if an editor agrees to use one of the author's fake suggestions, that author is allowed into the ScholarOne system and create whatever identity he wants as a registered "peer reviewer" in the system. Unfortunately, ScholarOne isn't the only system with such glaring vulnerabilities. Another system, Editorial Manager, does something no halfway well-designed system in 2015 should be doing:

Editorial Manager's main issue is the way it manages passwords. When users forget their password, the system sends it to them by e-mail, in plain text. For PLOS ONE, it actually sends out a password, without prompting, whenever it asks a user to sign in, for example to review a new manuscript. Most modern web services, such as Google, hide passwords under layers of encryption to prevent them from being intercepted. That is why they require users to reset a password if they forget it, often coupled with checking identity in other ways.

Yes, I've experienced this very thing as a reviewer for journals using Editorial Manager. Even so, to me the Nature article is misguided in that it seems to harp on vulnerabilities in the various computer software platforms used by publishers to manage submissions and peer review a bit too much and on the true flaw that allows self-peer review to occur a bit too little. Don't get me wrong. Technological and security problems are serious. After all, no software should make it so easy for fake reviewers to be entered into the system, and no software should be sending out passwords in regular e-mail in plain text. However, the true problem that facilitates fraud of this sort lies less within the software used than within the system that uses the software. Even so, Nature's list of "red flags" that "you just might be dealing with fake peer reviewers if..." is rather simple. One is even amusing:

The author asks to exclude some reviewers, then provides a list of almost every scientist in the field.
The author recommends reviewers who are strangely difficult to find online.
The author provides Gmail, Yahoo or other free e-mail addresses to contact suggested reviewers, rather than e-mail addresses from an academic institution.
Within hours of being requested, the reviews come back. They are glowing.
Even reviewer number three likes the paper.

Number four amuses me just based on my own behavior. I rarely complete peer reviews in less than three days, and frequently I'm so busy that I'm late, such that the editorial software is sending me reminders. As for number five, this gives you an idea of why that's downright funny:

Yes, "reviewer number three" is notorious for being the one whose criticisms of a submitted manuscript are the most—shall we say?—pointed.

The fox guarding the henhouse?

It should be quite clear from the discussion above that the real practice that facilitates peer review fraud is the way that many journals ask authors for names of suggested peer reviewers and then actually use those names. I've always wondered about this myself, because, after all, at the very minimum, no one's going to suggest a peer reviewer who's likely to trash the paper being submitted. Even leaving aside the possibility of fake peer reviewers, using peer reviewers suggested by an author makes it far more likely that the review will be less rigorous and far more likely to recommend publication with few changes. After all, scientists are only human. If they're asked to pick their own peer reviewers, of course they're going to pick ones that maximize their chances of getting published and minimize their chances of having to do multiple revisions and more experiments to satisfy reviewers' criticisms.

Readers who aren't scientists and haven't dealt with peer review before might reasonably wonder: Why on earth do editors do this? Haug lists three reasons:

In highly specialized fields, authors may actually be the best qualified to suggest suitable reviewers for the manuscript in question.
It makes life easier for editors because finding peer reviewers can be difficult, given that it's unpaid work that can be quite demanding.
Journals and publishers are becoming increasingly multinational, which means that it's become more difficult for editors and members of editorial boards to be familiar with all the scientists throughout the world working on a topic.

These all sound very reasonable, but for them to be valid reasons to use author-recommended reviewers there have to be trust, honesty, and transparency because, as Steve Novella pointed out discussing this issue, scientists are human beings and some proportion of human beings will always cheat to gain an advantage. That can never be completely eliminated. However, any good system with an incentive for cheating (and, make no mistake, there are major incentives for scientists to publish in good journals, as such publications can make their careers and provide evidence of productivity to be used in grant applications) should implement processes to make cheating more difficult and the price of being discovered cheating more costly.

It seems to me that, at the very minimum, the era of asking scientists for suggestions for peer reviewers for their own manuscripts must end. The reasons why many (but by no means all) journals have done so for so many years are quite understandable but no longer defensible in the wake of these damaging and large scale incidents of self-peer review fraud. This practice must stop, even at the price of more work for already harried editors. One technological solution that might help would be a database of peer reviewers, each with his or her relevant field of expertise listed, as well as collaborators and those with whom they've published, so that editors can know not to send a manuscript to an author's friend or collaborator for review. In the wake of these scandals, it might even be profitable for a company to develop such a database and sell access to publishers. Lacking a system like this, it will fall on the shoulders of editors to be more careful and to pick peer reviewers themselves, rather than using any recommendations by authors submitting manuscripts.

Is the peer review system a "sacred cow" that needs slaughtering?

All this brings me back to the title of this post, which is based on a quote from Richard Smith, former editor of the British Medical Journal (now The BMJ). Speaking at a Royal Society meeting in April, Smith characterized the peer review system as a "sacred cow" ready to "slaughtered." As you can imagine, that particularly juicy quote went down quite well among those who are less than enamored with science-based medicine, such as Robert Scott Bell and, of course, Mike Adams' minion Ethan Huff at NaturalNews.com, who twisted Smith's quote to read 'Sacred cow' of industry science cult should be slaughtered for the good of humanity, BMJ editor says.

Of course, what these accounts neglected to mention was that Smith made his quotes in the context of a debate with Georgina Mace, professor of biodiversity and ecosystems at University College London, with Smith taking the "anti-" position and Mace taking the "pro-." Thus, it might not be surprising for each debater to take a more extreme position. For instance, Smith actually characterized John Ioannidis' famous 2005 paper "Why most published research findings are false" as meaning that "most of what is published in journals is just plain wrong or nonsense," which is clearly not what Ioannidis was saying. Just because something turns out to be incorrect does not make it nonsense in the context of the time, and, in fact, Ioannidis was making an argument that prior plausibility has to be taken into account in doing and interpreting research studies, which is a key argument for science-based medicine.

Still, Smith did make some good points, particularly when he described a BMJ experiment in which a brief paper was sent to 300 reviewers with eight deliberate errors introduced into it. No reviewer found more than five; the median was two, and 20% didn't spot any. Of course, I would counter that this observation is not an indictment of peer review as a process, but rather evidence that BMJ under Smith's editorship didn't pick its peer reviewers very well and that peer review needs improvement. Perhaps, instead of scrapping peer review, we should work to improve it.

Fix it, don't dump it

Fixing peer review is more the approach taken by Richard Horton, who is the current editor-in-chief at The Lancet and who published an article around the same time entitled Offline: What is medicine’s 5 sigma? Of course, whenever I hear Horton pontificate about peer review, it's hard for me not to remember that he was also the editor of The Lancet under whose regime Andrew Wakefield published his execrable 1998 Lancet case series that was has been used to blame autism on the MMR vaccine for nearly 18 years. Still, after discussing the problems with research and peer review, Horton does make some decent points. Perhaps he has learned from l'affaire Wakefield:

Can bad scientific practices be fixed? Part of the problem is that no-one is incentivised to be right. Instead, scientists are incentivised to be productive and innovative. Would a Hippocratic Oath for science help? Certainly don’t add more layers of research red-tape. Instead of changing incentives, perhaps one could remove incentives altogether. Or insist on replicability statements in grant applications and research papers. Or emphasise collaboration, not competition. Or insist on preregistration of protocols. Or reward better pre and post publication peer review. Or improve research training and mentorship. Or implement the recommendations from our Series on increasing research value, published last year. One of the most convincing proposals came from outside the biomedical community. Tony Weidberg is a Professor of Particle Physics at Oxford. Following several high-profile errors, the particle physics community now invests great effort into intensive checking and re-checking of data prior to publication. By filtering results through independent working groups, physicists are encouraged to criticise. Good criticism is rewarded. The goal is a reliable result, and the incentives for scientists are aligned around this goal. Weidberg worried we set the bar for results in biomedicine far too low. In particle physics, significance is set at 5 sigma—a p value of 3 × 10^–7 or 1 in 3·5 million (if the result is not true, this is the probability that the data would have been as extreme as they are).

I always love it when physicists suggest such a strategy, given how much more variability is inherent in biological and medical research, so much so that very few experiments ever reach that level of significance statistical significance. Still, I could see decreasing the p-value for "statistical significance" to 0.01 or even 0.001. I could even see eliminating the p-value altogether, together with using Bayesian reasoning to estimate the probability that a given result is correct. Weinberg might be correct that the current value is not strict enough, but medicine isn't particle physics, and there is a huge difference between preliminary experiments with small numbers and large randomized clinical trials with a high prior plausibility.

There is value in some of Horton's other suggestions. Certainly, one problem is that, as much as we scientists want to do a good job at peer review, the fact remains that peer review is unpaid and, from an academic standpoint, doesn't really contribute much to our career advancement. For instance, when going up for promotion, assistant professors do have to show evidence of scholarly activity, such as peer review, but peer review is of low value in that equation compared to other activities. Publishing a single peer-reviewed paper in a decent journal is worth more than reviewing dozens of papers for journals, and a single NIH grant is worth more than reviewing any conceivable number of papers. Receiving neither significant financial nor career rewards for performing the onerous duty of peer review, scientists understandably don't knock themselves out to review papers. Is this any wonder, particularly given that, as Horton points out, there is no reward for high quality reviews and a perverse incentive (i.e., fewer papers to review) for doing low quality reviews? These are the sorts of impediments that have to be changed, along with tightening procedures to make self-peer review far more difficult to achieve. More radical changes could include a system of "open" peer review, such that reviewers are known and their comments follow the published paper, although such a system would present its own challenges, particularly given the reluctance of more junior faculty to publicly criticize the work of more renowned senior faculty.

What is becoming clear is that, whatever changes we make in the peer review system, we can't keep doing what we're doing any more. Referencing the Churchill quote, at the moment, as flawed as it is, our peer review system is the best system we have for evaluating science. Until someone can come up with an alternative that works at least as well (admittedly not the highest bar in the world), it would be premature to abandon it. That doesn't mean it can't be improved. Contrary to Richard Smith's view, peer review is not a sacred cow, and it doesn't yet need to be slaughtered.

oracknows Mon, 12/28/2015 - 02:00

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Good article.

My suggestion for improving peer review is to open it up - publish the names of reviewers along with the article. This would help solve the problem of fake reviewers, plus address the incidence of personal issues (i.e. competitive jealousies) getting in the way of "objective" reviews.

There cannot be real improvement if we do not realize that the critical term in "peer review" is "peer". Homeopathy journals are peer reviewed, and neither you nor I would be happy to have one of our papers evaluated by such "peers". Being a productive author, even in conventional academic journals, is insufficient to qualify him as "peer".

Well, my husband dearest recently wrote an article that had to be peer-reviewed (nothing connected to medicine, humanities). And he was asked to supply names of possible reviewers. So he did - he gave names of three scholars specialising in his narrow field, more accomplished than he is. The thing is, they are not his colleagues, he's just met them at a few conferences but they are from other institutions. He got a positive review overall, but with suggestions for changes, which he implemented. As far as I can tell - for the better.

As for publishing names of reviewers, I'm sceptical here, at least when thinking about my husband's field of research. Younger reviewers particularly would be afraid to provide negative reviews of older and more established scholars' work, as it could have a negative impact on their careers. Sad but true.

Double blind peer review. The reviewers don't know the author's name, the author doesn't know the reviewers' names. It's not perfect, sometimes it's easy to guess who the author is, but you should at least try. It's the standard in the field of cryptology. Letting the author give names of reviewers? Unthinkable.

The more serious problem is the

hypothesis -> prediction -> test -> success or fail.

In particular with Global Warming claimants.

When you query their predictions suddenly there's a new science where you don't have to make predictions.

Or the predictions are projections.

Or more likely a whole stream of abuse.

That's with peer reviewed science.

That's the problem. Peer review isn't the gold standard. It's a priori testing and prediction that gives you more confidence in a hypothesis.

Predictions that fail, falsify.

There's an in built asymmetry.

So what does a failure to predict say about the skills of the original peer reviewers?

Reviewers not knowing the author's name is one potential change that might be beneficial (if complete disclosure is not considered feasible) - the problem is in highly specialized fields where there is a limited amount of active research, and it would be fairly obvious to reviewers who was submitting the paper.

I remember that years ago one of my very first grad courses was in how to (figuratively) rip apart papers. It was excellent training for reading the literature and, hopefully, avoiding some of the major mistakes others had committed.

Perhaps as a replacement for the current peer review process we could hold competitive review sessions with small rewards (Smarties, Mars Bars?) with starving graduate students or hungry & underpaid post-docs? Perhaps free pizza and bragging rights with the group, ... ?

This is likely to have the advantages that the reviewing process is likely to be a bit more of a novel activity, may be a real learning experience for the reviewers who may have to do a bit of digging and (grad students forgive me) the students are as likely or more likely to have time to do thorough reviews.

R the digging I have found that actually looking at references, the actual papers that is, can be quite revealing. Abstracts can be misleading, probably unintentionally but still misleading; sometimes the cited paper does not exist, cannot be traced or actually shows the exact opposite of what the reviewed paper claims.

On the other hand one does understand the issue the video was highlighting:

http://www.nature.com/scitable/blog/labcoat-life/when_peer_review_turns…

@ Laurent
I must admit I was surprised that all reviews are not double-blind. It is standard for most or all psychology papers.

Double-blind peer review is not really feasible, as authors often are citing themselves anyway. Paying reviewers (or some reward) might go somewhere, as there is indeed almost no reward for the job which can be arduous. I do find asking the authors to suggest reviewers is asking for trouble. Asking the reviewers for names to avoid (with good reasons for that) makes more sense.

Asking authors to supply names of reviewers has led colleagues in my field to establish their own ring of not-quite fraudulent reviews: they simply all suggest each other, and everyone in the the ring is sworn, even if only tacitly, to give each other's papers only glowing reviews. It works very well, and has resulted in the publication in good journals of a great many boring, sloppy papers, to the great advancement of the careers of the members of the ring.

Just sayin'. There's nothing illegal or fraudulent about that, and it happens, I am sure, in all fields. But it results in shoddy, even erroneous, science being published all the same. Authors suggesting reviewers has to stop. Names of people *not* to be asked to review is worthwhile, even necessary.

And, no scientist who is junior to the one being reviewed, or even perhaps on the same level, would dare submit criticisms if their name was revealed as the reviewer. That would be the end of their career.

The editor has to be judicious and put work into the decision, including evaluating the reviewer and whether his/her critique is likely to be unbiased. More time, less rush. If that could ever happen.

Clearly we need more papers using all-caps for emphasis. Just can't get enough of that.

For all the talk of abandoning peer review, we have the examples of Medical Hypotheses or the old fast-track PNAS papers to show what things are like without it.

Personally, I don't like the practice of suggesting reviewers from either side. As an author, I don't do it unless the submission software forces me to do so. As an editor, I ignore the list completely. This practice is a hangover from pre-internet days, when you would select one of the author's choices and one of your own. With the various databases now available there is no excuse.

There are lots of other issues around peer rewiew that need fixing. Editors should actually check through the manuscripts themselves and not just accept the word of the reviewers.

And then there are the bottom-feeding pay to play journals, for whom I refuse to peer-review as being a waste of time. Denialists are now starting to love peer review, for certain qualities of review.

What Garnetstar and Chris Preston said -- the keyhole through which these fraudsters gained entry is the practice of letting authors suggest their own reviewers. This is not done in my field (astronomy).

We also use only one well-selected (one hopes!) reviewer per paper, as a rule. This reduces the labor burden on the community and on the editors. On the other hand, if a bad paper gets published in astronomy, no on dies (as a rule).

A journal's editorial staff should have sufficiently fine-grained expertise to be able to find good reviewers on their own. The big astronomical journals have a platoon of associate editors who cover the waterfront pretty well -- papers tend to go to well-qualified reviewers. I've occasionally had less-than-savvy reviewers, but they're mostly pretty good.

I'm not sure if the video "Peer review ca. 1945" is still up, but if it is, it is an especially good bunker-meme parody.

#11 Chris Preston
There also may be the problem that some reviewers, at least at some research institutes, have to deliver their reviews by Ouija Board.
https://exile.wordpress.com/2011/05/12/boo-peer-review-at-the-fraser-in…

some reviewers, at least at some research institutes, have to deliver their reviews by Ouija Board.

And why not? Last year I found a message in my spam-tray addressed to my co-author Dr Joachim Harloff, inviting him to contribute his papers to an India-based bottom-feeding mockademic vanity press, Global Journal of Human Social Science.* The problem being that Dr Harloff died in 2012. Perhaps I was expected to pass on the invitation through a seance.

* Available in "Online, 3D and Print versions", the 3D edition presumably being a pop-up book. I was disappointed by the absence of an interpretative-dance edition.

I was disappointed by the absence of an interpretative-dance edition.

ObStarman.

On the other hand, if a bad paper gets published in astronomy, no on dies (as a rule).

Man, ya'll really screwed the pooch with the orbit of Nibiru.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=ueAYUp4rHZI

I agree with several of the comments suggesting that a significant portion of the problem is carelessness on the part of reviewing editors: a few weeks ago I heard an odd, aborted freak-out coming from one of my lab mates at his desk (something along the lines of: "AAAAAAH! $@(#($!*!!!.... wait...is this...what the...?") It turned out that he'd been asked to review his own paper! (the initial swearing was because, at first glance, he thought he'd been scooped.)

To be fair, the reviewing editors are themselves volunteers squeezing their editorial duties into whatever time they have left after research, writing, mentoring, faculty committees, etc. If journals had their own salaried, in-house editors, their names could be included with the authors' without fear of reprisal, giving them an incentive as well as the time to thoroughly vet both the manuscript itself and the reviewers they choose. As a bonus, it would create jobs for the ever-growing numbers of biomedical PhDs.

Obviously, the biggest issue will be finding the money to pay these editors. But I should think (hope?) that publishing in a journal known to employ a more rigorous form of peer review would confer a degree of prestige on the author(s) (kind of like the idea behind impact factors except that it would actually mean something) - and we already know that researchers will pay higher page fees to publish in a higher-impact journal that will look good on their CV.

^ I ran some hypothetical numbers to see how much a paid reviewing editor would increase the cost of publishing a paper. Assuming for the sake of argument that the editor is paid $60,000 per year, and reviews 100 papers per year (2 per week, less a 2-week vacation), the additional cost would be $600 per paper - not too bad. Now I'm kind of surprised more journals aren't already doing this.

@14 herr doktor bimler
The Global Journal of Human Social Science looks like a very reputable and worthy journal, I mean, see the review here http://scholarlyoa.com/?s=Global+Journals.

@16 Gilbert
That is an unusual link but I am not sure I understand it.

@ 17 Sarah A
If journals had their own salaried, in-house editors
Well the academic publishing industry is based on free labour and it would interfere with profits if the publishers had to pay "gasp" salaries for such things

Most of the major academic/scientific presses are no longer particularly interested in "knowledge". They often are now owned by venture capital firms who want a ROI.

https://medium.com/@jasonschmitt/can-t-disrupt-this-elsevier-and-the-25…

There have even been reports of complete false journals being published http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/27383/title/Elsev…

HDB, jrjrideau
http://scholarlyoa.com/?s=Global+Journals.

Dear editor,
In view of the negative reviews and considering the high level of competition, I am sorry to inform you that I have taken the decision to reject your journal.
Feel free to continue spamming my mailbox in the future.

gilbert @16, jkrideau @19 -- I had to use my google-fu to figure it out. The link gilbert posted was to the ending scene of a Lars Van Trier movie, Melancholia, that ends when a planet that has intruded into the solar system collides with the earth, so everybody (and everything) dies, including Kirsten Dunst.

Niburu I already knew about, more or less -- in the crank-o-sphere, it's believed to be an extra body in the outer reaches of the solar system that periodically causes all kinds of havoc on earth. NASA supposedly knows all about this and suppresses the truth -- of course. Don't ask me how NASA maintains a complete lock on all astronomical knowledge worldwide.

Oh, and Old Time Indians still get to smoke, guys.

Think about it. It's not "Tobacco Use Disorder." It's just something we do for our DEAD HOMIES, you know, the ones who FELL recently.

Thanks, Detroit.

See you soon.

22 palindrom
Ah, I had very vaguely heard of Niburu but totally missed the significance of the end of the movie. My apologies Gilbert.

Re NASA, it's simple, it is completely on the control of the One World Order. (Well it's a logical as any other "explanation" )

^ "in" the control. My earlier post was obviously interfered with by an agent of the New World Order.

Letting the author give names of reviewers? Unthinkable.

This ten times.

Twice now I've received emails from Academia.edu inviting me to accept a "co-author" tag on a paper with an "L. Brown" listed as an author, whom is not me. I have no idea how they got my email address, but it's annoying. I tried their "Do not contact me" link after the first one, which didn't work.

No idea if Academia.edu is legit or not, but if this is the normal level of diligence in peer review, we are in a world of hurt.

On skepticism, pseudo-profundity, Deepak Chopra, and bullshit

oracknows — Wed, 02 Dec 2015 03:00:31 +0000

On skepticism, pseudo-profundity, Deepak Chopra, and bullshit

Of all the slick woo peddlers out there, one of the most famous (and most annoying) is Deepak Chopra. Indeed, he first attracted a bit of not-so-Respectful Insolence a mere 10 months after this blog started, when Chopra produced the first of many rants against nasty "skeptics" like me that I've deconstructed over the years. Eventually, the nonsensical nature of his pseudo-profound blatherings inspired me to coin a term to describe it: Choprawoo. Unfortunately, far too many people find Deepak Chopra's combination of mystical sounding pseudo-profundity, his invocation of "cosmic consciousness" and rejection of genetic determinism, and his advocacy of "integrating" all manner of quackery into real medicine (a.k.a. "integrative medicine, formerly "complementary and alternative medicine," or CAM) to the point of getting actual legitimate medical school faculty to assist him with an actual clinical trial compelling. He is, alas, one of the most influential woo peddlers out there. Worse, he was once a legitimate MD; now he's a quack. Indeed, as I've described before, of all the quacks and cranks and purveyors of woo whom I’ve encountered over the years, Deepak Chopra is, without a doubt, one of the most arrogantly obstinate, if not the most arrogantly obstinate. Right now he's pushing his latest book, Supergenes: Unlock the Astonishing Power of Your DNA for Optimum Health and Well-Being, which asserts that you can control the activity of your genes.

So it was greatly amusing to me to see Deepak Chopra and his pseudo-profound bullshit (and I use the term because the source I'm about to look at uses the term) featured so prominently in a new study by Pennycook et al entitled On the reception and detection of pseudo-profound bullshit. The study was performed at the Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, and the School of Humanities and Creativity, Sheridan College. Indeed, Deepak Chopra's pseudo-profound bullshit is a key component of the study. I love the way the abstract starts, too:

Although bullshit is common in everyday life and has attracted attention from philosophers, its reception (critical or ingenuous) has not, to our knowledge, been subject to empirical investigation. Here we focus on pseudo-profound bullshit, which consists of seemingly impressive assertions that are presented as true and meaningful but are actually vacuous.

First, what do the authors mean by pseudo-profound bullshit? I might as well quote their definition in full, even at the risk of a large block of quoted text:

The Oxford English Dictionary defines bullshit as, simply, “rubbish” and “nonsense”, which unfortunately does not get to the core of bullshit. Consider the following statement:

Hidden meaning transforms unparalleled abstract beauty.

Although this statement may seem to convey some sort of potentially profound meaning, it is merely a collection of buzzwords put together randomly in a sentence that retains syntactic structure. The bullshit statement is not merely non- sense, as would also be true of the following, which is not bullshit:

Unparalleled transforms meaning beauty hidden abstract.

The syntactic structure of a), unlike b), implies that it was constructed to communicate something. Thus, bullshit, in contrast to mere nonsense, is something that implies but does not contain adequate meaning or truth. This sort of phenomenon is similar to what Buekens and Boudry (2015) referred to as obscurantism (p. 1): “[when] the speaker... [sets] up a game of verbal smoke and mirrors to suggest depth and insight where none exists.” Our focus, however, is somewhat different from what is found in the philosophy of bullshit and related phenomena (e.g., Black, 1983; Buekens & Boudry, 2015; Frankfurt; 2005). Whereas philosophers have been primarily concerned with the goals and intentions of the bullshitter, we are interested in the factors that pre- dispose one to become or to resist becoming a bullshittee. Moreover, this sort of bullshit – which we refer to here as pseudo-profound bullshit – may be one of many different types. We focus on pseudo-profound bullshit because it rep- resents a rather extreme point on what could be considered a spectrum of bullshit. We can say quite confidently that the above example (a) is bullshit, but one might also label an exaggerated story told over drinks to be bullshit. In future studies on bullshit, it will be important to define the type of bullshit under investigation (see Discussion for further comment on this issue).

This is about as fantastic an introduction to a scientific paper as I've ever seen. It also defines a form of BS at whose production Deepak Chopra is expert at. But how does one measure the inherent "BS-ness" of a statement? The way the authors did this was absolutely hilarious. Some of you might be aware of a website, The Wisdom of Chopra, which is a random Deepak Chopra quote generator. As the generator tells us, each "quote" is generated from a list of words that can be found in Deepak Chopra's Twitter stream randomly stuck together in a sentence. This was one source of raw material for the authors. The other was the New Age Bullshit Generator, which was also inspired by Deepak Chopra and works on similar principles, but uses a list of profound-sounding words compiled by its creator, Seb Pearce. Examples include sentences like “Imagination is inside expo- nential space time events” and “We are in the midst of a self-aware blossoming of being that will align us with the nexus itself.” These sites were used to produce ten meaningless sentences.

Next, Waterloo University undergraduate students were asked to rate the sentences using the following 5-point scale: 1= Not at all profound, 2 = somewhat profound, 3 = fairly profound, 4 = definitely profound, 5 = very profound. Before the study started, the same students answered demographic questions and completed five cognitive tasks intended to assess components of cognitive ability. They also answered questions designed to assess religious beliefs. These students rated the ten meaningless pseudo-profound statements. This first study was to assess the BS potential of the statements and validate the internal consistency of the measures, specifically the new measure, dubbed the "Bullshit Receptivity" (BSR) scale, which had good internal consistency. Basically, the higher the BSR values attributed to these statements, the higher the, well, receptivity to BS demonstrated by the subject. The authors found that BSR was "strongly negatively correlated with each cognitive measure except for numeracy (which was nonetheless significant)" and that "both ontological confusions and religious belief were positively correlated with bullshit receptivity."

The next study looked at some real world examples. Participants were recruited for pay from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. In addition to the ten meaningless statements used in the above study, ten novel items were generated by the two websites, and the authors also obtained 10 items from Deepak Chopra's Twitter feed; e.g.:

Attention & intention are the mechanics of manifestation #CosmicConsciousness

— Deepak Chopra (@DeepakChopra) June 29, 2014

Subjects were also assessed by additional instruments, such as the Paranormal Belief Scale and measures of wealth distribution and ideology. In contrast to the first study, participants evaluated the meaningless statements before completing the cognitive tasks, and the items from Chopra's TWitter feed folowed directly after the meaningless statements. This time around, Chopra's Twitter items were rated as slightly more "profound" than the nonsense items, but the mean ratings for the two scales were very correlated. It also turned out that the BSR scale significantly correlated with each variable tested, except for the Need for Cognition. Specifically, BSR was negatively correlated with performance on the heuristics and biases battery and positively correlated with Faith in Intuition. As in the first study, cognitive ability measures were negatively correlated with BSR.

Finally, in the remaining two studies included in this paper, the authors wanted to test whether some people might be particularly sensitive to pseudo-profound BS because they are less capable of detecting conflict during reasoning. Basically, they wanted to try to get some insight into why some people are particularly prone to pseudo-profound BS and others aren particularly resistant to it. To test this, they did more studies in which they created a scale using ten motivational quotations that are conventionally considered to be profound (e.g., “A river cuts through a rock, not because of its power but its persistence”) because they are written in plain language and don't contain the vague buzzwords characteristic of statements in the first two studies. They also included mundane statements that had clear meaning but wouldn't be considered "profound" (e.g., “Most people enjoy some sort of music”). They then compared the correlations they found before.

They found that those more receptive to bullshit are "less reflective, lower in cognitive ability (i.e., verbal and fluid intelligence, numeracy), are more prone to ontological confusions and conspiratorial ideation, are more likely to hold religious and paranormal beliefs, and are more likely to endorse complementary and alternative medicine (CAM)." The authors also assessed the same correlations using a measure of sensitivity to pseudo-profound BS determined by computing a difference score between profundity ratings for pseudo-profound BS and legitimately meaningful motivational quotations. Thus, people who rated the truly profound statements a lot higher than the pseudo-profound BS will have higher scores in this measure, which the authors propose as an estimate of how sensitive an individuals "bullshit detector" is. They found that BS sensitivity was associated with better performance on mesures of analytic thinking and lower paranormal belief. It was not, however, correlated with increased conspiratorial ideation or acceptance of CAM, which surprised the authors, who noted:

This was not predicted as all three forms of belief are considered “epistemically suspect” (e.g., Pennycook, et al., in press). One possible explanation for this divergence is that supernatural beliefs are a unique subclass because they entail a conflict between some immaterial claim and (presumably universal) intuitive folk concepts (Atran & Norenza- yan, 2004). For example, the belief in ghosts conflicts with folk-mechanics – that is intuitive belief that objects cannot pass through solid objects (Boyer, 1994). Pennycook et al. (2014) found that degree of belief in supernatural religious claims (e.g., angels, demons) is negatively correlated with conflict detection effects in a reasoning paradigm. This result suggests that the particularly robust association be- tween pseudo-profound bullshit receptivity and supernatural beliefs may be because both response bias and conflict detection (sensitivity) support both factors.

The authors make a point about different kinds of open-minded thinking, an uncritical open mind versus a more reflective open mind:

As a secondary point, it is worthwhile to distinguish uncritical or reflexive open-mindedness from thoughtful or reflective open-mindedness. Whereas reflexive open- mindedness results from an intuitive mindset that is very accepting of information without very much processing, re- flective open-mindedness (or active open-mindedness; e.g., Baron, Scott, Fincher & Metz, 2014) results from a mindset that searches for information as a means to facilitate critical analysis and reflection. Thus, the former should cause one to be more receptive of bullshit whereas the latter, much like analytic cognitive style, should guard against it.

Overall, the authors have made a significant contribution by coming up with their Bullshit Receptivity scale and Bullshit Sensitivity scale, but it is not without its limitations. For one thing, the authors focused on very brief statements, generally less than Twitter-length, which limits the statements to 140 characters. It isn't clear whether these results can be generalized to what the authors refer to as more "conversational" BS, which can be quite different than that of pseudo-profound BS. More importantly, this is preliminary work. The scales used contained relatively few items, and there was arguably way too much focus on one person's work or pseudo-profound BS inspired by one person: Deepak Chopra. While it's true that he is fantastically skilled at coming up with such seemingly profound but vacuous statements and is probably the most famous person doing it, Chopra is just one person. Surely there are so many more examples that could have been mined.

Despite these differences, I think this study is an interesting, albeit flawed, first step at elucidating what factors contribute to receptivity and resistance to BS. As the authors put it:

The construction of a reliable index of bullshit receptivity is an important first step toward gaining a better understand- ing of the underlying cognitive and social mechanisms that determine if and when bullshit is detected. Our bullshit re- ceptivity scale was associated with a relatively wide range of important psychological factors. This is a valuable first step toward gaining a better understanding of the psychology of bullshit. The development of interventions and strategies that help individuals guard against bullshit is an important additional goal that requires considerable attention from cognitive and social psychologists. That people vary in their receptivity toward bullshit is perhaps less surprising than the fact that psychological scientists have heretofore neglected this issue. Accordingly, although this manuscript may not be truly profound, it is indeed meaningful.

I tell ya, social scientists are far more tolerant of self-deprecating humor than biomedical scientists are. There's no way a statement like the last sentence would make it into a basic or clinical science paper.

Be that as it may, this study seems to confirm much that is instinctively known (or at least has been assumed): analytic thinking probably decreases susceptibility to BS; paranormal beliefs go hand-in-hand with such susceptibility. It also tells us that susceptibility to nonsense is quite widespread in the population, who tend to be far more easily persuaded by emotional, vague, seemingly "profound" appeals than they are by data, science, and evidence. The question that a study of this type always raises, of course, is whether correlation indicates causation in this case. Can deficiencies in analytic thinking and reasoning be remedied to decrease one's susceptibility to BS, and if so what is the best way to go about this?

These are the sorts of questions skeptics have been asking for a long time. They are questions with real world consequences, because BS is everywhere.

oracknows Tue, 12/01/2015 - 22:00

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Another example of psuedo-profound BS is a game invented by philosopher Julian Baggini - Zizuku. It involves taking a mundane and true statement and reversing cause and effect. The example I remember best is "If there were no antisemites, there would be no Jews." At first glance it looks profound, but closer looking reveals it for the nonsense it is.

What do you think of this guy?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRFveea3khg

This video appeared on a non-believers site, the guy was recently featured in Smithsonian magazine. Then about half-way through the video he says his co-author is .... Deepak Chopra???HUH?

I think that any people with limited intellectual capacity tend to confuse form with substance. It is very common in biomedical science where fashionable technics and words become the criteria of judgement. It was also true when doctors spoke in Latin.

Marketing, marketing, marketing. It looks to me like promotion by association. Besides, mind over genes is right up Chopra's alley.

Great paper and the results tally with my personal observations of the woo prone. Most of them run workshops of one kind or another and trying to decipher what they actually teach from the descriptions they provide is like trying to unscramble an egg.

One of the worst offenders in my circle actually posted a link to the Deepak Chopra random quote generator as though it was somehow a good thing that Chopra remixed made about as much sense as original Chopra.

I took a linguistics course many, many years ago. We analyzed speeches for substance. Remarkable how little is actually said in some discourse.

Unfortunately, the study was heavily unbalanced for gender, with far more female (n= 222) compared to male undergraduate students (n=58). Still, it's a great start and bound to lead to further investigations. Between the study and the New Age Bullshit Generator, to say nothing of the Chopra-like statement generator, Christmas has come early. Now, if I can just find John Cleese's address, I'll be bringing it to his attention.

*My post above was meant for Daniel Corcos #3.

Chopra is the, as far as I can tell, simply the greatest bullshitter alive. I suppose that deserves some kind of respect.

Possibly because of ethnicity, I'm afraid, I often think of Dinesh D'Souza (aka "Distort D'Newsa") as Chopra's evil twin.

Is it possible that mentioning the subject of the article immediately kicks a comment into moderation? Here's a bowdlerized version of one I just submitted, but which waits in the queue:

Chopra is the, as far as I can tell, simply the greatest bee-yessir alive. I suppose that deserves some kind of respect.

Possibly because of ethnicity, I’m afraid, I often think of Dinesh D’Souza (aka “Distort D’Newsa”) as Chopra’s evil twin.

@ MikeMa

I took a linguistics course many, many years ago. We analyzed speeches for substance. Remarkable how little is actually said in some discourse.

Isaac Asimov wrote a scene in the first book of the Foundation series where the speech of a diplomat was computer-analyzed by the Foundation's psychohistory scientists. They were a bit sorry to report that his nice speech was free of actual content.

I suspect Asimov would have been positively delighted reading this study on pseudo-profundity. His writings left me the feelings he was a dedicated champion of science over fuzzy thinking.

Oh boy! Perhaps I can take it a step further.... let me see..

Production of profound-sounding BS requires particular cognitive abilities which involve verbal skill, abstraction and person perception in order to effectively scam others.

Chopra is apparently gifted in these capacities and in addition, has the advantage of a multi-cultural perspective- the West and Exotic India- which can be used to obfuscate material to those with a purely monocultural outlook ( either culture) with quasi-religious notions from the other system.

In my own travels, I have become very well acquainted with inferior BS which is pseudo-profound as well but on a much lower level based upon the decreased abilities of its perpetrators.

Occasionally, instead of quasi religious notions ( QRN) they will substitute misunderstood scientific concepts- which function as redeeming saviours- or generic floaty notions (GFN) such as spirit, soul, vibrations and gratefulness. Of course I'm referring to Teresa Conrick- who finds the universe in the microbiome and Gary Null ; their audiences most likely mirror their lower abilities. Thus, I'd rate them as one sd lower and 2 lower respectively compared with Chopra.

@Helianthus,
I remember that story. Might have to reread the trilogy to refresh the Harry Seldon stuff.

As part of the linguistics course, we analyzed some stock speeches from Kennedy, Hitler and others. Hitler was fascinating as the there was no substance whatever, at least for the assigned sections the professor gave us.

As part of the linguistics course, we analyzed some stock speeches from Kennedy, Hitler and others. Hitler was fascinating as the there was no substance whatever, at least for the assigned sections the professor gave us.

Out of curiosity, I once started reading the English translation of his autobiography (not mentioned so as not to trip the filters). I couldn't even get 30 pages in. He was a terrible, disorganised thinker.

Part of the problem with the sciency-sounding woo is of course that a relatively small number of folks understand what the terms being deployed actually mean. RationalWiki has a fine article on one aspect of this, which is about the "Igon Value Problem".

Mathematically-trained readers will already find this hilariously funny; others can read the short article to see what the fuss is about.

Sorry folks, but I think the study is an embarrassment and it will backfire spectacularly.

As Orac noted, it was far too focused on one target, that being Chopra. The very fact that the target was so damn "easy" makes the conclusions weak ("look what a great marksman I am, I can shoot a rifle and hit the side of a barn at 100 feet!"). It also threw in a gratuitous jab at religious believers in general, via the stereotype that they're basically stupid (try doing that about race and see where it gets us).

That makes it equivalent to a study done by members of one political party about the BS spouted by the other political party: easily dismissed as being nothing more than ideological rhetoric dressed up with numbers. In other words, more pseudo-profound bullshit (PPBS) itself. Self-congratulatory triumphalist PPBS with whipped cream and a cherry on top.

It frankly infuriates me because it could have been done so much better and would have stood up. As it is, a best it's an inside joke, and at worst it will be usable by Chopra to claim he's being singled-out and persecuted. Sheesh!

The real goldmine for PPBS is popular music. Just listen to the way teenagers and 20-somethings quote the lyrics as if they're quoting scripture.

But to be thorough, we should also look at songs from other eras as well, and no doubt there'll be much PPBS there, much of it in the form of subtle "adult" innuendo.

For that matter also look at film and television. Most of us here have a positive view of the Star Trek TV series (plural), and yet they're chock-full of examples.

It would also be interesting to disentangle pure PPBS from its verbal component, which could be done by looking at reactions to purely instrumental music, including classical music that's generally considered "profound," and including paintings (both portraits and landscapes).

Those kinds of studies would provide an objective basis for concluding that PPBS is real and that people who believe it do so earnestly.

That conclusion could be used rhetorically against Deepak and other woomeisters and their followers, and it would be fair game to do so. And, they couldn't claim they were being witch-hunted by mean people with grudges.

But the present study is not that. It's frankly crap.

I'm just gunna put it thought there that if as the creators of this study, this article, and as the readers of it, if we are stupid enough to think that meaning is only derived in language from the person who speaks we're idiots. Meaning is both in the intention behind the person who speaks, and in the judgements behind the person who hears. Not one or the other. What you could hear as having no "substance" at all, is simply a judgement based on your pre-conceived notions of what that means.

I am by no way saying we should all listen to Chopra, but a study cannot be done on "what has substance?". Who is anybody to say what substance is, and thus what has it and what doesn't. It's not that simple.

Whilst reading this, the long-ago physicist in me thought about the branch of applied mathematics called Information Theory (pioneered by Claude Shannon of Bell Labs in the 1940s). It was designed to look at communication of data over noisy channels, including the entropy of a messsage (where less entropy = more efficient transmission of message with least amount of overhead). B*llsh***, could be viewed as maximum entropy (ie no information conveyed), which is also true in a biological sense in that what the bull eats is of lower entropy then what it excretes. It may be that as computational linguistics accelerates in its ability to parse language, we may be able to run a true information theory analysis on what any expert in a field says. That's my 2 bit's worth.

Who is anybody to say what substance is, and thus what has it and what doesn’t. It’s not that simple.

Uh, this statement sounds like one that could have been included in the study.

Seriously, though. Words mean things, and, although it's hard to quantify "substance," lack of substance can certainly be identified. It's not as though linguists haven't been doing that for a long time.

I really want to like this study for a couple of reasons, the least of which is that Mr. Delphine is a Waterloo grad. I can't stand Deepak Chopra. That said, I tell ya, social scientists are far more tolerant of self-deprecating humor than biomedical scientists are. There’s no way a statement like the last sentence would make it into a basic or clinical science paper. this pretty much sums up a lot of why I don't, plus it gives off more than a whiff of sneering condescension and smug look-at-me-aren't-we-smart.

Going after Chopra in this manner is kind of like shooting fish in a barrel. There's plenty of material, and as Gray Falcon noted, this could have been done a whole lot better.

Funny, I said the same thing, although I still think the study is worthwhile even with its flaws:

Overall, the authors have made a significant contribution by coming up with their Bullshit Receptivity scale and Bullshit Sensitivity scale, but it is not without its limitations. For one thing, the authors focused on very brief statements, generally less than Twitter-length, which limits the statements to 140 characters. It isn’t clear whether these results can be generalized to what the authors refer to as more “conversational” BS, which can be quite different than that of pseudo-profound BS. More importantly, this is preliminary work. The scales used contained relatively few items, and there was arguably way too much focus on one person’s work or pseudo-profound BS inspired by one person: Deepak Chopra. While it’s true that he is fantastically skilled at coming up with such seemingly profound but vacuous statements and is probably the most famous person doing it, Chopra is just one person. Surely there are so many more examples that could have been mined.

:-)

Sure. Like this useless imbecile. https://twitter.com/marwilliamson?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eser…

Marianne Williamson @marwilliamson Nov 29
The cultivation of enlightenment is the only antidote to the neurotic obsessions of the ego mind.

https://imgflip.com/readImage?iid=8809780

Marianne Williamson @marwilliamson Nov 24
If in a troubled relationship with someone, pray for their happiness 5 minutes a day for 30 days. By then they'll change - or you won't care

So basically what you're saying, Marianne, is that you're an asshole.

Julian Frost: "Out of curiosity, I once started reading the English translation of his autobiography (not mentioned so as not to trip the filters). I couldn’t even get 30 pages in. He was a terrible, disorganised thinker."

One of my high schools had an English translation of Mein Kampf in its library. As a lark I checked it out. During lunch I read out many passages to my friends, and we all laughed at its idiocy and paranoia.

Like you, I could not read much of it at a time. I just flipped through the pages and read a random passage. That was over forty years ago, and I cannot even remember what they said... just the reactions.

Chopra's sort of nonsense will only become more popular as marijuana is gradually legalized.

One of the things I found interesting about the study was that one of their randomly generated sentences actually was profound, sort of:

The future explains irrational facts.

This could easily be interpreted in the same vein as some well-known aphorisms like "Age begets wisdom".

I wonder if the authors vetted their random statements for accidental meaning. Somewhere, an infinite number of monkeys are typing away.

The future explains irrational facts.

That is not a given. Irrational facts (although are they really a fact if their irrational?) can proliferate in a future where no one is vetting them. And for whom is it explaining them? Only those who look for the answers is my take.

This statement makes for great navel-gazing discussion at the coffee shop but it's not profound.

Similar to Dan Welch, I thought that the authors fail to account for the ability of people to import meaning into pseudo-profound statements (a sort of verbal Rorschach test, perhaps?) For example, I found one of the genuine Chopra twitters, "Intention and attention are the mechanics of manifestation," to be both true and meaningful, though the meaning I derive from it is probably the exact opposite of what Chopra intended. It sounds like a variation of the popular New Age belief (a la "The Secret") that your thoughts (intention and attention) can cause things to happen in the real world (manifestation.) Usually my response to this sort of thing is something along the lines of "of course your emotions, desires, fears, etc., have an impact on the real world - because they have such a powerful effect on your actions. The problem, of course, is that Chopra et al tend to leave that part out, partly because its difficult, of course, but more importantly, I suspect, because it's boring: there's nothing esoteric or magical about making things happen with plain old hard work.

Actually, I found the most interesting part of this post to be the distinction between "reflexive" vs "reflective" open-mindedness. That seems like a more thoughful and informative response to people who accuse skeptics of being "close-minded" than the old saying about being so open minded your brains fall out.

"Attention & intention are the mechanics of manifestation"

To be fair to Chopra, that's obfuscated, but it's not bullshit in the sense of meaninglessness.

"Attention and intention" - noticing stuff and wanting to do stuff.

"Mechanics of manifestation" - the way you make something happen.

That one's in the "legitimately meaningful inspirational quotation" bin, though it's so anodyne in its actual meaning as to not be very inspiring.

"...although are they really a fact if they are irrational?"

Typing too fast and not paying attention.

Sarah A,

I think the ability of people to impart meaning is one of the ploys the profoundly fuzzy speakers use to sound intellectually profound. If you don't know what they mean by what they say and you create it to match what you believe then aren't you more likely to impart importance to what they say about other things? Rhetorical question only and merely speculative on my part but I have seen great speakers who have a lot of charisma by always being elusive about what they really mean. Politicians mostly but there was a game going around in business circles called "Bullshit Bingo" that we used to play during conference calls and CEO meetings.

re Deepak's, Marianne's and others' proclivity to utilise 'profoundness' as an aid to obfuscation:

we know that kids' development ( usually) includes a leap from the purely concrete to more abstract concepts/ language as they become adolescents ( i.e. formal operations) so it makes sense that woo-slingers would imitate development by tossing about more abstract terms.

Why be down to earth when you can float around in the atmosphere? Also, material of this nature is more vague and difficult to pin down, subject to multiple interpretations- indeed as mentioned above- it can be a Rorschach.

Unfortunately, I am often witness to such drivel courtesy of prn.fm. Energy, spirit, love and myriad other buzzwords abound whereas Mikey just attributes the *ne plus ultra* to the Creator.

Surely you and the authors of the paper have missed the point. The Chopra generators, although seemingly created as japes, are in reality, and like Chopra himself, the cosmos showing us the deep, meaningful knowledge available to all of human kind. If only we would open ourselves to it, we would find the understanding that the universe itself has for us and would become aware of the transcendent, spiritual gestalt of which we are already a part. Obviously, the subjects who saw the profundity of the statements were not poor at BS detection, but in better touch with the unconscious spirit permeating the universal being. Furthermore, Chopra is . . . uh. My train of thought seems to have gone off the rails.

This stuff. The words. The muddled meanings. Good times, good times. *sigh*

This kind of woo made up way to much of my day, because nothing brings woo to the table like a birth plan. Gods sakes but some really imaginative stuff suddenly comes to the table when a baby is due. I'd like a dollar for each out-there birth plan I've had to wrestle into submission. In full disclosure my background is as an ICU nurse who eventually went into high risk obstetrics. Pregnant women need chest tubes sometimes, too, and all that. The woo didn't really enter the picture there. It was when I covered the "normal" births that it reared its pseudoscientific head. I felt like a large bit of my time was drawing boundaries for well meaning but less than critical thinkers.

No. I can't promise that your baby will be born into a completely silent room so that the universe and cosmic forces can move more freely. Alas.

No, I am not going to catch your baby in a dark room. The attending physicians won't, either. It's better for all involved if I can see things. Like your body. And my own hands. Same for the doctor.

No. No we can't promise that the staff won't use the words 'pain', 'blood', or 'surgery' in the birth room.

....Why? Because if there is bleeding that requires surgical intervention I am going to alert my coworkers to that fact and I'd really rather not do it by means of pantomime and pictionary..

I'm fine with your doula playing the chimes/crystals/bowl from Tibet but not in my ear and not over my sterile field. Never over the sterile field. Ever. Or on your abdomen. Or your nether regions. All of that is spoken for in the birthing process and the uterus makes no allowances for singing bowls when it's expelling a human being or two. Crazy, I know.

And so on and so forth.

I'm not perhaps the very best at seeing the other side of the equation really. My training was based on facts and science and a constant reevaluation of the patient, and the factors influencing outcome and well being. I'm kinda busy when I'm at work and trying to juggle woo is not my favorite pastime even when things are going swimmingly. The advent of woo based pseudoscience has been a pain, and a dangerous one because it transfers focus from real threats and complications and places weight where no discernible threat exists. It puts me at odds with a portion of the patient population and their ideas concerning good patient care. Having a father tell you later that they wished you hadn't rung the alarm and disrupted the sacred birthing space is blink worthy. Hey, sorry sacred space, but baby was not happy and thus, NICU was called, just as it's always going to be called if baby isn't happy. That's my "universal experience of holistic and awareness based reality and manifestation of educated intent" and I'm stickin' to it.

Mr. Furious: Okay, am I the only one who finds these sayings just a little bit formulaic? "If you want to push something down, you have to pull it up. If you want to go left, you have to go right." It's...

The Sphinx: Your temper is very quick, my friend. But until you learn to master your rage...

Mr. Furious: ...your rage will become your master? That's what you were going to say. Right? Right?

The Sphinx: Uhhh....not necessarily.

@JGC - Ooh, that reminds me of a story from Terry Pratchet's Thief of Time:

In the Second Scroll of Wen the Eternally Surprised, a story is written concerning one day when the apprentice Clodpool, in a rebellious mood, approached Wen and spake thusly:

“Master, what is the difference between a humanistic, monastic system of belief in which wisdom is sought by means of an apparently nonsensical system of questions and answers, and a lot of mystic gibberish made up on the spur of the moment?”

Wen considered this for some time, and at last said: “A fish!”

And Clodpool went away, satisfied.

It is very common in biomedical science where fashionable technics and words become the criteria of judgement.

Not just the biomedical sciences, but in just about every human endeavor. I'm sure you've heard of buzzword bingo. There is a reason that game exists. When I write proposals, they have to be suitably buzzword-compliant, and that's only a necessary condition, not sufficient. If a NASA panel calls your proposal "interesting", that's a kiss of death (there's another code word you would rather that they use in your case).

It's been with us for a long time, too. George Orwell wrote a famous essay on the subject, and it's only gotten worse since then.

Off current blog topic, but found this little gem on Not-so-TMR. Thought you might find it fresh blogging fodder.....as if you need any! Check out the first post, 'Preparing to Vaccinate'. Because, you know, it's like arming for battle.
http://journeyboost.com/

Hey, sorry sacred space, but baby was not happy and thus, NICU was called, just as it’s always going to be called if baby isn’t happy.

Silly Lauren - it's not about the baby, it's about the mother having an uplifting, spiritual experience that she can brag about on Mothering.com to prove how enlightened she is. The health and well-being of the baby is a purely secondary consideration.

"I think the ability of people to impart meaning is one of the ploys the profoundly fuzzy speakers use to sound intellectually profound."

Horoscopes.

am I the only one who finds these sayings just a little bit formulaic?

[Mr. Furious tries to balance a hammer on his head]
Mr. Furious: Why am I doing this, again?

The Sphinx: When you can balance a tack hammer on your head, you will head off your foes with a balanced attack.

Mr. Furious: And why am I wearing the watermelon on my feet?

The Sphinx: [looks at the watermelon on Mr. Furious' feet] I don't remember telling you to do that.

The values pi and e are irrational facts. I cannot say whether the future will explain them.

The values pi and e are irrational facts.
They are also transcendent facts, so the future will embrace them.

Lauren - do you have the machine that goes ping?

They are also transcendent facts
I shall attempt to transcend dental medication.

Indeed, for the machines that ping are ever so useful, why, do'ya need to lease one?

If not, would you like to get a good deal on some Tibetan singing bowls that will realign your vibrational colors to their most ultra state of wellness?

And Sarah A,

I've sadly felt a bit like that at times. I try and attribute it to cheery ignorance and not willful ignorance on the part of patients. I'm aware that being from a critical care background I'm 'different'. DIC and compartment syndrome are out of the range of the normal and the probable for just about every person on the planet (and that's good). For me they are not weird or something unheard of, let's face it with the icu no one is there for anything fun. I do know with that background I am way way over in left field when discussing risk awareness. Totally willing to admit my ideas are not most people's ideas when it comes to the debating of what ifs and medical worries. I'm trained to be watchful, but it made me a good sentry. I'm not lax, but calmly assessing, always, I swear the monitors are an extension of me, ping and all, in a good way, I think.

However...

As you put it so succinctly, woo seems to alter the vision of what medical care should not only look and feel like, but gear itself around. Of course I want people to have a good experience but my idea of what's good is 'hey nobody is worse for this or trending downward, checking vitals again, in fact we seem to be on a great trajectory, but let's look over the labs and another vitals check, so lemme stay vigilant here, what's the baby looking like, double checking mom again, and steady as she goes'. Someone's ability to blog about it never factored into my training... :/ I dare say I'm boring to write about. "And then she massaged my uterus and saw I wasn't hemorrhaging so we then discussed proper latch on and she took my baby's temp."

Not really a page turner, hm?

Mephistopheles -- PDQ Bach, inspired by the experience of anesthesia while undergoing a tooth extraction, wrote the "Trance and Dental Etudes". He also wrote a piano piece called "Traumarei", and an opera called "The Civilian Barber".

His chronicler Dr. Peter Schickele, of the University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople, explored PDQ Bach's legend and legacy in a University Seminar, entitled "Originality Through Incompetence".

[PDQ is, of course, a creation of Schickele's. Schickele himself has written a lot of fine music, and his compositions attributed to PDQ Bach are, aside from their comic value, actually very good as well.]

palindrom - P.D.Q. Bach? You mean the las and least of J. S. Bach's twenty-odd children (as well as the oddest)? The composer of Hansel and Gretel and Ted and Alice? The man who Franz Schubert had just heard of when he wrote in his magazine, "hats back on, gentlemen, an idiot"? Never heard of him.

☺

This is for Helianthus. A favorite Asimov quote:

"There seems to be a rule that the more foolish the assertion, the more ardently people will believe it."

I appreciate irreverance and entertainment value in a scholarly paper, but as usual 'social science' isn't science, and this study is particularly awful. It would take me more words to detail the failings of this study than the authors used in the journal article, so I'll just note the first thing that struck me:

The author refer to the test statements in the first study as "meaningless" yet offer no theory of "meaning" and make no references to scholarly work on how "meaning" works. The ten test sentences are simply assumed to be "meaningless" because they "have syntactic structure but consist of a series of randomly selected vague buzzwords." However, with the Chopra generator, for example, the relatively small size of the vocabulary base, and the algorithm for valid syntax, will sometimes combine to assemble vague buzzwords into statements that aren't meaningless at all, but rather 'polysemic' or 'open texts' – that is, depending on what readers bring to the table, they can mean several different things. A statement that lacks one precise meaning is hardly empty of meaning.

Take their exemplar sentence: "Hidden meaning transforms unparalleled abstract beauty". My first thought in reading it is that it's bad prose. The use of "unparalleled" sticks out as over-narrowing what is otherwise a broad proposition. So, were I to be told this was written by a human being, I'd assume the author lacked verbal skill, assume meaning was intended, guess that "unparalleled" was just bad usage, assume that "great" was more like what the writer was going for, and attempt to make sense of the sentence with that correction in mind. At that point, the claim is vague, as it doesn't explain what a 'hidden' meaning is, or how beauty is transformed: e.g. is it diminished or enriched?

Since I know some things about abstract art, I immediately think of examples of both such 'tranformations' – abstract works that tend have different aesthetic effects when encountered in 'innocence' than they do if you know the story behind them. Here is an abstract expressionist animated film (silent, 110 seconds long):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-rACt6IX5c

Please take a look, and form an impression based simply on what you see. In a subsequent post I'll suggest a 'hidden meaning' (which may be 'authentic' or one I've made up). The test will be if/how 'transforms' the degree of beauty you find in the work in any direction.

In the study, none of the statements are given any context whatsoever. Several of them strike me as the kind of claims that would actually make sense in some context that has defined the terms being used, and given examples for which the claims are some sort of summary conclusion, though not to be taken literally, but allowing for 'poetic license'.

There are no controls whatsoever applied in the research design. For example, it's one thing if the subjects did actually find the statements meaningful, and another if they rated them as 'profound' without having formed any understanding of what they might be expressing. Look at the 'priming' in the instructions given to the subjects:

We are interested in how people experience the
profound. Below are a series of statements taken from relevant websites. Please read each statement and take a moment to think about what it might mean. Then please rate how “profound” you think it is. Profound means “of deep meaning; of great and broadly inclusive significance.

Thus, the subjects are led to believe that the statements were authored by human beings, and appeared on sites relevant to 'experiencing the profound'. They are directed to think about meaning – encouraged to 'read in' if you will. They are asked to rate the level of profundity on a Likert scale – all of which would lead them to assume the researchers have selected the statements for being to some measure profound, and are interested in ranking them. Given the institutional framework, the effect of assumed researcher authority, observation effects, etc., we don't know whether the score any individual subject assigned to a statement reflected whether they personally found the statement profound, or whether it reflected a judgement of 'this is the kind of statement to which profundity is generally attributed by people who are smarter than I am'.

I could go on to many other errors, but the priming alone completely bolluxes the validity of the research design.

If there's a valid experiment in BS detection here, the journal article is the test material, it's readers are the test subjects, and the measure would be what percentage of them recognize the study as a joke dressed up in the lingo of science, vs. the percentage that take the 'findings' as useful and significant because they conform to their conformation biases.

P.D.Q. was not only the last and least of the Bach kiddies, but got worse as he went along, his later efforts failing to match the twisted genius of "Concerto for Horn and Hardart."

I just really liked seeing the word bullsh*t so many times in a scientific paper.

It reminds me of a cultural anthropology paper that was on my reading list at university, that I have probably mentioned here before: "F*cking Tourists: Sexual Relations and Tourism in Jerusalem". I like the double entendre, having seen first hand the ambivalent relationship between tourists and locals in Egypt.

It seems that profanity in a URL triggers the moderation censor. Good to know.

MOB & HDB,

Live and learn?

JGC @34 and hdb @40, I also enjoyed "Mystery Men". Ben Stiller does comic rage surprisingly well.

I perfectly agree with Sadmar. We should question ourselves about the fact that a flawed experimental study published in a journal looks more "scientific" to some people than the simple and obvious statement "People with limited intellectual capacity tend to confuse form with substance". There would be some new information if the results had shown the opposite, but actually it does not, and only indicates that the readers convinced that this paper is good science have limited intellectual capacity.

Chris Hickle @ 17: Ha! I like that information-theoretic approach. Calculate the entropy of the statements. Though, we should be careful when dealing with idiomatic usage because it's actually much more compact and information-dense than the literal connotations of the words would imply.

---

Re. Acebojangles @ 25: Yes, I agree, as pot is legalized, Chopra will become more popular. As a source of humor and jokes.

"Man am I high! Hey check out what's on this website: 'The is-ness of the was-ness is the source of the true energy of being....'"

"Haahaaaheeeheee, oh stop you're killing me!, heeheehaahaa...."

If you want to jump-start the trend, go reserve DeepAck.com, and as a logo, use the classic comic strip picture of Bill the Cat going "Aaack!" Install a "random quote finder" function that pulls sentences from Chopra, Mikey the Health stRanger, Age of Autism, and various homeopaths and suchlike. Have it also pull quotes from popular song lyrics, political speeches, and advertising.

Include a "MadLibs" function that asks people for words and then plugs the into actual quotes: "The is-ness of the _cows_ is the source of all _polka-dotted_ energy of _drinking milkshakes_..."

And then take ads from pot-related businesses in states where it's legal.

You will make a pile of money, and the site will do more to demolish quacks than a new set of FDA regulations or smug papers by social scientists with smug attitudes. "Funny wins over smug every time," and that statement is truly profound;-)

---

Not A Troll @ 30: Please say more about "BS Bingo," I think it would make a fantastic exercise to use against woomeisters and quacks. And of course against self-absorbed manager types, per the original intent. The more we get people into the habit of laughing at BS, the better, especially in election season.

---

Lauren @ 33, try this with difficult patients: "We consulted a Feng Shui master and (s/he) said that the optimum location for your Doula is over _here_ [away from the patient and sterile area] where we have set up a very comfortable chair and a table for her to perform rituals...." (I'm inclined to say that Feng Shui is acceptable as a system of aesthetics for architectural design when the architect is seeking Asian influences, but this isn't that.)

---

Sadmar @ 49: Excellent points, all of them.

Excellent Sadmar. I was on the verge of calling bullshit on the study/paper - too many combinations of big, science-like words - my BS meter was heading towards eleven.

Gray Squirrel,

Nice way to revive the thread! It is too bad the research paper although funny, has its own issues. This is a subject I would love to see investigated. It runs rampant in the business world hence the meme of Bullshit Bingo aka Buzzword Bingo.

I really like the Bill the Cat idea. If not for copyrights, I think I would take that and run with it.

I was reminded of Daniel Dennett's Deepities while reading this; although Chopra's BS are often not even deepities.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjsC53RGO4Q

Skip to 3:40.

For some reason I found the little twit from Chopra to be clever if not profound, "Attention & intention are the mechanics of manifestation" ....A manifestation is something made and mechanics are the tools while attention /intention is another way to say the 99% inspiration/perspiration meme. Perhaps I am reading too much into gibberish but I could believe the intent really was to reword the old metaphor.
I am surprised at myself because I am one of those who has habitually ridiculed Chopra for a very long time and for good reason being most of that he writes is just profound sounding hooey.

The word manifestation does have a religious tone as in something virtual and not something real. I gave Chopra the benefit of the doubt that he was using the word to cite something real. I could be mistaken because citing something real is not Chopra's usual MO.

Not A Troll @ 59: Thanks!, and Yes you can, here's how:

1) Start the site as something purely non-commercial. This enables you to legitimately claim "fair use" for one picture of Bill the Cat going "Aaaack!"

2) If the URL is already taken, try variations such as .net and .org and .us, and Deep-Ack with the hyphen, etc.

3) Under the cartoon put a note saying "see copyright info below," and in the note, a) credit to original artist, and b) ask original artist to contact you via email so you can ask about licensing that image for commercial use "if" you do anything commercial with the website such as taking advertising. That's a legit "if," because if you can't contact the artist, you still have the option of keeping it ad-free and not making money while demolishing quacks.

4) Don't rely on Google or its offspring for ad placement. Basically they suck, they don't pay nearly as much as individually-placed advertising, and they often run ads that are competitive with or otherwise detrimental to the sites on which they are placed. They also relentlessly spy on everyone who comes to your site, which is something that even legal pot smokers are highly wary of and may drive them away from your site.

5) Put up satire ads for MJ-related products and services, notably including pizza and Chinese food delivery services. That'll help get the ball rolling if you eventually take real ads.

6) Don't just chase Chopra: spread out and chase all of 'em, such as Mikey and the anti-vaxers and Food Babe. Anyone who's become a target of Orac and his scheming minions (ha) is fair game. If you're going to pursue the "pseudo-profound BS" angle, be sure to go after vacuous lyrics in popular music, vacuous lines in film, television, and political speeches.

If you manage to get a site up & running, by all means post the URL in an appropriate place in one of Orac's columns, I'm sure we'll all (and he too most likely) will want to come take a look.

NaT:

Gray Squirrel is right that it's Fair Use, but that's never stopped rights holders from harassing people. But that costs $$, so whether your safe on Fair use or not, they leave you alone unless A) You're really hurting their pocketbook, B) You have deep pockets they can dip into, C) The original creator or heirs still have the rights and take your use as an ad hominem affront (see Michael Jackson / John Oswald).

I think GS is dead wrong about #6, though. The ore generic the frame, and the more multiple the points, the less the more the message sinks into the drone of media noise. The more specific the approach and more singular the message, the better it cuts through. You still could go after other sources of “pseudo-profound BS”, but the way to do that would be to connect them to Chopra: e.g. create parody conversations between Deep-aack and other BSers, or a 'Deep-aack's Diary' where 'he' comments on other public people or things he admires. As for Mike Adams and Food Babe, I don't see that their BS even pretends to profundity... so perhaps Deep-ack could write them 'open letters' of advice on how to dress up their woo in the garb of pseudo-philosophical brilliance.

Also, I'd advise not go Sokal and rip on actual philosophers – just because they're obtuse and discuss things in figurative terms doesn't make them BSers. If there's a community of smart, sensible folks who 'get' the work, if it sounds like BS to you, it's likely a comprehension/paradigm-difference issue. It's the folks whose faux-profundity fools 'the masses' that are truly talking out of their rear ends.

Hi Sadmar;-)

Re. #6: The problems with exclusively going after Chopra are:

1) Doing that gives him ample ground to claim that he's being singled-out, targeted, harassed, etc. That will backfire by making him the sympathetic character and making you the badguy or cyber-bully.

2) The goal isn't to drive Chopra screeching nuts, it's to reach undecideds and give them a skepticism vaccine. If you get painted as the badguy, you lose some of those undecideds.

3) As with the published paper on pseudo-profound BS, the appearance of being on some kind of partisan mission against one target will hurt your credibility.

4) A wider range of targets will reach a wider audience and draw them in. Particularly if the targets include some more well-known examples such as items that are currently in the news (e.g. politicians, advertising campaigns for well-known products, etc.).

5) One more thing that I should have mentioned earlier: never ever post anything on a site like that, that could in any way be interpreted as a call for violence against a target. Yah it's legal, "freedumb of screech" & all that, but it's immoral and it will also definitively paint you as the badguy and your target as the goodguy. Also, avoid "smug" like bubonic plague, because a large majority of people think that smugness is highly obnoxious.

On the other hand, 6) YES I agree, "open letters" advising Mikey and Babe how to dress up their BS so it's pseudo-profound, would be funny as hell. Great idea!, someone needs to do this.

As for other philosophers, most of them are too unknown to most people to be worthwhile as targets. Though frankly I find some of them have their heads quite a bit further up their derrieres than DeepAck himself. I could take about five minutes of reading DeepAck's website before it got like the intellectual equivalent of fingernails on a chalkboard, but there are others (can't remember names at the moment) who I could take for about two minutes before I had to get the heck out of there.

And speaking of pseudo-profound BS, don't even get me started on the Singularitarians. One of these days I am going to do a detailed and definitive takedown of their nonsense, in a different forum. IMHO their stuff is particularly dangerous because they are professional technologists who use tech to look scientific, and they also manage to circumvent the critical thinking skills of people who really ought to know better. My point with this is, New Age language isn't the only form of pseudo-profound BS: one can do it in plenty of other types of language, and using computer jargon is a very common version.

Ah, what one misses if they don't backtrack on a thread (I don't receive notifications of comments via email.)

Gray Squirrel, you have quite the business plan there. Yet, I 'm not entirely convinced about the copyright thing. I know that some business are advised to sue on copyright merely because if they don't they are considered not to be serious about it.

The URL won't be a problem nor will a server. The automated pull and mad-lib function will take some investigation but I may start out in a different direction. Also, I had exposure to Google Ad-words a couple of jobs ago and you are correct - not the best company to deal with.

You're also correct that the world is filled with plenty of material. Motivational posters, positive psychology, movies (one saying that's always bugged me is "Love means never having to say you're sorry" and the woo-meisters. Of course I'll have to read some more of D. Chopra's work. "Aaack!"

After I am out of my current situation, I'm going to invest some time into this idea. If it ever does get off the ground, all attributions go to you.

Anyone getting their point across to a large and appreciate audience must be doing something right. Even if we don't like the message perhaps there is something we can learn from the delivery of the message. That way we can gain from the experience.

I met Deepak Choprah a few years ago. It was cringeworthy. This guy is so smarmy and glib that I couldn't believe people buy his schtick. I just wanted to get away from him after about a minute and could not believe anyone buys his nonsense. It is so practiced and automated that I don't understand how anyone with a brain can talk to him for even a minute and not see through him.

i have little experience with, and knowledge of the things yall made comment on. yet, i do have enough common sense to realize that you were sincere, patting each others back, and funny. i think there should be this much camaraderie, as opposed to trolling, in more areas of life. now that was uplifting. thanks for a fun read!

Hubris versus skepticism: The case of neurosurgeon Ben Carson

oracknows — Mon, 23 Nov 2015 06:00:20 +0000

Hubris versus skepticism: The case of neurosurgeon Ben Carson

As a surgeon and skeptic, I find neurosurgeon turned presidential candidate Ben Carson to be particularly troubling. I realize that I've said this before, but it's hard for me not to revisit his strange case given that the New York Times just ran a rather revealing profile of him over the weekend, part of which included Dr. Carson answering criticism for the really dumb things he's said about vaccines, evolution, and the like. People like Ben Carson are useful examples of how highly intelligent people who are incredibly competent in one area can also demonstrate unbelievable ignorance in other areas. Ben Carson, having spent his life caring for patients with incredible dedication and skill, can't seem to go a day without saying something incredibly stupid now that he's running for President. Whether it's pandering to the antivaccine wing of the Republican Party, denying that he used to be a shill for Mannatech, a supplement company whose business practices have been less than ethical, or denying evolution, Carson's depths of scientific ignorance and willingness to lie have reached crank levels.

So, you might think, if Ben Carson is such a crank and there's considerable evidence that the views he's been espousing on the campaign trail are not new, why is it that no one seemed to realize this until Carson entered politics? It turns out that Carson was such a private man that few people knew:

When he was not in the operating room at Johns Hopkins Hospital, performing one of his 400 surgeries a year, Dr. Ben Carson could often be seen walking slowly through the hallways, hands behind his back, nodding, smiling and speaking softly to co-workers and students who approached.
“When he walked around Hopkins,” said Dr. Anthony Avellino, a former colleague, “he was like God.”

Patients and nurses asked him to sign his books. Medical students flocked to his occasional lectures or a campus showing of the TV movie version of “Gifted Hands,” Dr. Carson’s memoir.

One student, Dr. Jonathan Dudley, recalled that “Some of my friends had a big poster of him up in their dorm room.”

It seemed fitting, then, that in 2013, Dr. Carson, who was retiring as chief of pediatric neurosurgery, was chosen to give the commencement address for Dr. Dudley’s class. But that March, during a Fox News interview, Dr. Carson appeared to liken same-sex marriage proponents to pedophiles and “people who believe in bestiality.”

We learn a lot of things in this profile. During his years at Johns Hopkins, Carson was basically a rock star whom seemingly everyone admired. He did way more cases than the average neurosurgeon (around 400 a year compared to the usual 250 a year for a typical academic neurosurgeon at Hopkins), and he did some of the most difficult cases. He worked long hours and by all accounts was a good teacher. In the world of surgery, a surgeon who does a lot of cases, many of which are more difficult than average, does them well, and works very hard will earn a great deal of respect and good will. In fact, these are measures of status in the world of surgery, one way for a young surgeon to build a reputation. (Research is another, but, quite frankly, surgeons seem to admire technical skill and dedication more than they admire research, even in academic settings.)

Carson was also daring. he would undertake operations to separate conjoined twins. He revived an old operation for seizures, the hemispherectomy, which involves removing half the brain. Surgeons also admire this in other surgeons. So putting together Carson's work ethic, his technical skill, the number of cases he did, and his daring, it's not to surprising that he was so universally admired at Hopkins, the only complaints being from partners who had to cover for him so often when he traveled to give motivational speeches and do other events. Reading this profile, I couldn't help but wonder whether part of the problem was perhaps that, while Carson did have to engage in the rough-and-tumble given and take that normally occurs in a high-powered academic department of surgery over his surgical decisions, when it came to his crankier views, such as his belief in creationism and his promotion of cancer quackery, no one ever challenged him. After all, no one seemingly knew about them, and those who did seemed able to compartmentalize, just as Carson apparently compartmentalized. It's not hard to imagine a scenario in which Carson, as he became more and more famous based on his life story as told in his biography, his motivational speeches, and his increasing political activism, started to develop a touch of hubris and that that hubris carried over to his political campaign.

Think about it. Carson is a man who has never held elective office or even run a large organization, such as a company. The entire Johns Hopkins Pediatric Neurosurgery Program only has six surgeons and two physicians' assistants, which is actually a pretty big for such a program. Add ancillary staff, such as secretaries, nurses, and research faculty and staff and it's doubtful that there were more than 20 or 25 people in the entire department. This means that Ben Carson thinks himself capable of running the federal government after having only run a small academic department. Not only that, he thinks himself the best qualified person to lead the nation. (Every Presidential candidate thinks himself the best qualified person to lead the nation; otherwise he wouldn't run for President.) Also consider that Carson has no elective experience. As much as we like to delude ourselves that we don't want politicians as our President, running a country is an inherently political job. The two can't be separated. A President skilled at politics, who knows how the federal government works, how its departments work, how the legislature works, will be more successful than one who does not. So right there there's incredible hubris. So bad is Carson's lack of relevant skills for the presidency that even one of his campaign advisors gave an on the record interview to the NYT characterizing him as struggling to grasp foreign policy, leading one pundit to ask if there's a double agent in the Carson campaign.

And, as we all know, hubris is the enemy of skepticism. Hubris destroys skepticism because it interferes with the questioning of oneself, one's belief, and one's knowledge that must occur as part of critical thinking. Taken to an extreme, hubris can lead one to believe he is never wrong. Already, we see that in Ben Carson. When questioned about, for example, his long relationship with Mannatech, Carson basically lied through his teeth and denied that he was a spokesperson. Whenever questioned about anything, his first reaction is to double down and/or make excuses.

We see this in the interview published by the NYT. For instance, here is what Carson now says about vaccines:

Some people feel that I make the declaration and everybody has to march to my drum.

My point was that there are a lot of people who are so concerned about the load of vaccines that they are getting in a very short period of time that they may abandon the use of vaccines altogether, which would be a very significant public health issue for us. I think we have to be willing to talk with them and to look at alterations in schedule.

When you look at how many times the schedule has been altered by so-called experts, it tells you right there that whatever schedule they come up with is not necessarily the perfect schedule. Take into consideration the concerns of these people and let’s work with them, so that we can get people on the same page, rather than declaring: “I’m the great Oz. No one else could possibly know anything.”

Notice the straw men. No one was looking to Dr. Carson as the arbiter of whether vaccines cause autism and what should constitute the ideal vaccine schedule. However, because he is a pediatric specialist, his opinion does carry more weight to the general public than, say, that of Jeb Bush or Donald Trump. Given his past stance supporting school vaccine mandates, it was disappointing to see Carson change course and start to pander to the "health freedom" antivaccine wing of the Republican Party. It's even more disappointing to see that he is still pandering to them and still repeating antivaccine "concerns" wrapped in anti-establishment, anti-pointy-headed expert rhetoric.

He does it to the point of some seriously burning stupid:

There are some diseases where I think there is room for discussion. Chickenpox. Now, chickenpox is generally not a fatal disease by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, when I was a kid, they used to have chickenpox parties. Somebody would get it, and they’d bring everybody over so they would get it, too. And then everybody would be immune to it.

Oh,. My. God. Carson is actually parroting antivaccine talking points and blithely dismissing chickenpox parties as though they were OK. You'd think that a neurosurgeon would know the potential complications of varicella. Yes, such complications are uncommon, but they include pneumonia, coagulopathy, encephalitis, secondary streptococcal infections, and more. A doctor should know better. This doctor does not.

He also completely misunderstands the antivaccine movement:

The question for the antivaxers is, do the vaccinations create more problems than they solve? You are never going to convince them unless you are willing to sit down with the data and unless you are actually willing to listen to them and listen to their concerns. That’s been the problem.

I generally am very pro-vaccines and pro-vaccinations. I think they’ve saved a lot of lives and cut down on a lot of morbidity in our society.

I think the problem we are having now is we have an increasing number of antivaxers. I think they are being reactionary. And I think they are being reactionary because of the way things are being imposed upon them.

It is a microcosm of the bigger problems that we are having in our country right now where people try to impose things on everybody rather than sitting down and having an intelligent conversation and looking at the data, looking at the evidence.

This level of naïveté is painful to behold. What on earth does Carson think that vaccine advocates have been doing for all these years but showing the data and trying to convince antivaccine loons that vaccines are not only not dangerous but are safe and effective. Indeed, the very reason for vaccine mandates is because antivaccine activists can't be convinced with evidence, reason, and rational arguments. You can't have an intelligent conversation with them. It's certainly possible to have an intelligent conversation with the vaccine-averse parents (who are very different from the real antivaccinationists), but with hard core antivaccinationists? Not so much.

Then there's creationism:

I believe the Bible. I do believe it is the word of God. I do believe he created heavens and earth. It says in Genesis 1, in the beginning God created heaven and earth. Period. We don’t know how long that period is before he started the rest of creation. It could be a minute. It could be a trillion years. We don’t know. I have never stated that I have an understanding of how old the earth is. That’s something that a lot of people will ascribe to me.

Organisms, animals have the ability to adapt to their environment. But the evolutionists say that’s proof positive that evolution occurs.

I say it is evidence of an intelligent God who gave his creatures the ability to adapt to its environment so he wouldn’t have to start over every 50 years.

What is it with neurosurgeons and creationism? So Carson might not be a young earth creationist, as he has been accused of in some quarters, but he is clearly a creationist. The problem is that evolution is not only well supported by the existing scientific evidence but is currently the best explanation for the diversity of life.

I've said it before (many times). I'll say it again: Most physicians are not scientists, and highly intelligent people (like Ben Carson) are frustratingly all too often not skeptics.

As I've said before, every human being on this planet has the potential to believe the same nonsense the Ben Carson, or maybe nonsense on the same level as what he believes, if not necessarily the exact same beliefs. Add to that the considerable hubris that Carson has exhibited over the last three years, and you have a very toxic combination.

Hubris is the enemy of skepticism because skepticism begins with recognizing how our thinking can go awry, not just Ben Carson or other cranks but you, me, everybody. Critical to that recognition is having the humility to recognize that we all believe things without evidence and to begin to test our most deeply held beliefs against reality in order to determine which ones are supported by evidence and which ones aren’t, testing that must involve seeking out disconfirming evidence. Most importantly, we must have the humility to be able to admit when we are mistaken and be willing to change our minds when the evidence does not support our beliefs.

Ben Carson is a walking, talking, nonsense-spewing example demonstrating that a high level of knowledge and skill in one area does not necessarily make one a skeptic. As importantly, he also demonstrates how, no matter how soft spoken and seemingly self-effacing a person might seem, that does not mean that person is not full of hubris that destroys skepticism and critical thinking.

oracknows Mon, 11/23/2015 - 01:00

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Two points:

1) Carson's naive expectation that one can just "sit down and talk" with anti-vaxxers brings to mind a certain 2008 presidential candidate and his naive belief that one can just "sit down and talk" with certain world powers such as Iran and Russia.

2) It's not entirely clear, at least from the quoted portion of the interview, that Carson is expressing a policy rather than a religious belief. One can be religious, and believe in a god that created the universe billions of years ago, a god who designed the universe in such a fashion that it would give rise to life through the mechanism of evolution - and yet not think this is a legitimate subject of discussion in a science classroom.

Notice that Carson is expressing the willingness to accept as fact the existence of evolution (as a mechanism through which god manages the development of living beings in the world). Perhaps, then, when he says - as he has in other interviews - that evolution was an idea created by "the adversary" [presumably Satan], he merely means evolution as a replacement for God.

To be fair, this is highly unlikely to be the case (cf. his idiocy with the pyramids). But on the off chance that it is, it's not really fair to label him a creationist in the "crank" sense.

Dear friends, whom I love so,
This is a copy of an email I recently sent out
To a circle of bodhisattvas.
Please, please pay attention.

"Friends,

I have an urgent request to you.

First, read this article. h[]tp://http://washingtonspectator.org/donald-trump-and-the-f-word/

Pay attention to the news. Do not turn away.

Next, watch this video. h[]tp://http://www.ted.com/talks/carl_safina_what_are_animals_thinking_and_feel…

Now, educate yourself to the best extent you can on our factory farming practices.

And for the love of God, don't kill the f*cking mice that are pooping on the shelf where the towels are. Just trust me on this one.

Go back and read the Cain and Abel story and reflect upon the fact that I have a tattoo on my right arm, which I got done with a gift certificate from the Dharma auction a few years back which reads "Thou Mayest." It might also be good to look up the relevant part of John Steinbeck's East of Eden.

Thank you and good night.

Perhaps Carson has never seen a child die from a vaccine-preventable disease, though I'd think maybe as a neurosurgeon he might have put in some VP shunts on pediatric meningitis (Hib, pneumococcal, meningococcal infections--all vaccine preventable) survivors which would have impressed up him why vaccines are so important. I've seen one (unvaccinated) two-year old die horribly from Hib meningitis/sepsis, and the older pediatricians (this was in 2002) told me how they would see a case very month before Hib vaccination started. Lesson learned and forever burned into my cortex for me as a 2nd year pediatric resident.

At 64 years of age, maybe Carson is just "young" enough to have not seen a lot of vaccine-preventable diseases first hand, but the ignorance of what they used to be like is inexcusable for a physician.

One way (legislatively) or the other (after more VPD outbreaks with resultant death and morbidity) vaccine rates will start increasing in the US. Carson's views, depressingly, help to push things to the latter.

Unfortunately, Carson’s answers will seem moderate and reasonable to a great many people, especially agnostics of the “who knows?” variety, and the great majority of at least marginal believers. To the average person, it probably seems not unreasonable to spread out the vaccine schedule. My own children, one in particular, had his vaccines spread out in the extreme because he always seemed to have a bad cold when they were due. No doctor ever explained to me any harm that this might cause, and I was blissfully unaware of the attendanst risk until finding this blog (in spite of being a long time atheist and skeptic).

Your concerns are real, but it would seem difficult to convey them to the masses.

The vaccine thing, I'm convinced, is just to pander to far-right antivaxxers and to try and rope in some more liberal-leaning antivaxxers. I don't for a second think it's anything other than that, especially considering his very strong statements on mandatory requirements in the past.

Which makes it worse, actually. He's risking lives for a few votes. At least true antivaxxers really think they're right.

@ Chris Hickie / Yerushalmi

I'm afraid Ben Carson's position is more about pandering to as many niches of voters as possible, but especially to the various groups big on freedom, small on government.
His basic message, be it on religion or vaccines, could be summarized as: "government is providing guidelines, but feel free to do whatever you want".
In short, I don't know about being a neurosurgeon, but Ben Carson is definitively a politician: trying to appear reaching for a middle-ground position. 'Let's just sit and talk it out."

Left out of the window is, of course, the little issue of how much compromise is ethically acceptable in a given situation when following the other side's position is likely to result in avoidable harm.

That's why I'm not too thrilled by his half-mouthed acceptance of evolution. It sounds too much like "you call it evolution, I call it the Hand of God, but I will be a nice guy and let you call it whatever you want". To answer Yerushalmi:

he merely means evolution as a replacement for God.

I could buy that. He doesn't seem to be a young earth creationist, but the way he talks about "evolutionists", he seems to equate them with hard-line atheists. In other words, he does deny evolution, but as a standalone process.
That's still mixing up magical thinking and science, however.

No need to post this comment, just wanted you to fix a typo in this excellent and much needed post.
no one seemingly new
should be " no one seemingly knew"

Never forget the first principle.
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool."
If you forget the first principle, then no matter how intelligent, educated and experienced you are - it's all useless.

@Yerushalmi: I agree with Helianthus on this point. Look at Carson's quoted words:

But the evolutionists say that’s proof positive that evolution occurs.

The term "evolutionist" is a code word telling creationists that he's one of them, not one of those evil scientist types who believe[1] in evolution. He claims not to have a position on whether the Earth is 6k-10k years old, or substantially older, but he is clearly stating his opposition to the theory of evolution.

[1]Yes, I know, scientists don't believe in evolution per se, they believe that the evidence in favor of the theory is overwhelming. But that's not how fundamentalist religious types see it--they need to believe in something, so they project that need on scientists.

He's in the ID camp, IOW a stealth creationist.

I wonder if the groundwork for hubris wasn't laid at an early age-- a combination of early issues with learning, religious training, and being raised his mother's precious nebbish.

Being treated as a god later in life would be enabling to say the least. Still can't get over that seriously weird painting of him with Jesus.

Organisms, animals have the ability to adapt to their environment. But the evolutionists say that’s proof positive that evolution occurs.

Isn't that basically the definition of evolution? I think what he really means is that he accepts evolution, but not common descent (or, as creationists like to say, "microevolution but not macroevolution.") This seems to be the crux of a lot of the "talking past one another" that inevitably occurs when creationists and "evolutionists" (for lack of a more accurate but equally concise term) get into it.

We don’t know how long that period is before he started the rest of creation. It could be a minute. It could be a trillion years.

Yes, we do know, Dr. Carson. It just doesn't fit the narrative that you need to win over the current Republican base. That's why you want to pretend that "we" don't know. But we do. Carbon 14 is a hell of a little atom. You should get to know it sometime.

Other than the extreme he has taken his hubris--running for president--I don't see that there is much difference between Dr. Carson and celebrities who attempt to cash in on their popularity to advance a cause that is dear to them, however misguided they may be. Ultimately, the common sense of most Americans prevail, but it can be painful to watch and disheartening to see so many swayed by ignorance, lies, and misinformation.

@Helianthus

He doesn’t seem to be a young earth creationist, but the way he talks about “evolutionists”, he seems to equate them with hard-line atheists. In other words, he does deny evolution, but as a standalone process.
That’s still mixing up magical thinking and science, however.

Let's say you believe in an omnipotent, omniscient god that created the universe.

Almost by definition, you have to believe that any process present in the universe is one that that god set into motion and/or actively maintains. Similarly, every outcome of that process, no matter how small, must have been part of that god's original intent. After all, being omniscient, he knows all the actual, real-world outcomes of the laws and initial conditions he set into motion; and being omnipotent, he had the ability to set up a different set of laws and initial conditions in order to create an identical universe except for that one undesirable outcome.

That means that, if you believe in an omnipotent, omniscient god, and you also believe that evolution is the mechanism by which humans arose on Earth, you *must* believe that evolution took the path it did because god set it up that way.

Nothing I have said so far is in any way anti-science. There is no "magical thinking" involved here, nor is there the denial of evolution as a "standalone process". "Magical thinking" only arises if you take that as your endpoint. If you say "God wanted it that way" and leave it at that. (This would also prevent you from jettisoning the theory of evolution if and when evidence emerged that presented a competing theory.)

But if you instead say, "God created this principle of how the universe works, and now I will investigate exactly what the parameters of this principle are" - there is no functional difference between this and saying "this is the principle by which the universe works, and now I will investigate exactly what the parameters of this principle are". The basic definition of science is not "there is no God" or "there is no magic"; the basic definition of science is the hunt for the rules by which the universe works. (Magic and science are not incompatible, as long as it's of this type: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SufficientlyAnalyzedMagic.)

In conflating the generalized belief in God with "magical thinking", you are doing *exactly* the same thing Carson is doing in conflating "hard-core atheists" with "evolutionists", only from the other side. It might be *unscientific* to believe in god, but there's nothing that necessitates it being *anti-scientific*.

Consider that the Vatican has absolutely no problem with evolution or a 14-billion-year-old universe. Neither does Judaism.

I am an Orthodox Jew. The compatibility of Big Bang-like theories with Judaism, for instance, is established in rabbinical writings as far back as the 13th century, long before the actual Big Bang theory was created. Yet in the past fifty years there has been a surge of anti-scientific, anti-evolution attitudes among Orthodox Jews, mostly because of spillover in the war between anti-science modern evangelical Christians, and anti-religious atheist crusaders. A cultural attitude has emerged that says that science and religion are fundamentally incompatible, supported by the agendas of both sides in this war, and it's actually become quite damaging to Judaism. We've *never* had a problem with the basic principle of "God created a universe with a set of laws, and we can investigate and explain what those laws are", but all of a sudden this anti-science attitude has begun to emerge, and it makes me quite sad to see my religion trending in the direction of modern evangelical Christianity.

You can slice, dice, and parse and philosophize about faith anyway you like. What's going on with Carson matters because of current American politics, the 800 lb. gorilla subtext of which is attempts to wedge religion into science classrooms (see Kitzmiller v. Dover).

In general for purposes of discussion here, I think this guy is on the right track:

“If scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims.”
― Dalai Lama XIV

Yerushalmi #14,

You appear to be an educated and intelligent person, but you are stretching a bit here. It's one thing to say "God is just another name for the Big Bang, through which the laws of physics were established", and quite another to say "God is just another name for the Big Bang, and he really would prefer that you don't eat pork."

The latter represents the reality of Orthodox Judaism and Seventh-Day Advent-ism and so on. The former is something UU types might say, as one of the "least religious" religions.

Zebra, you are being divisive. Stop it. You are better than that.

I am saying neither.

I am saying that the belief in god does not preclude one from being a scientist and thinking rationally about the world. Believing in god doesn't prevent you from doing an experiment, reading the result, and changing your understanding of how the world works based on that result.

In assuming these are incompatible, hard-core anti-religionists do the cause of science a disservice by basically convincing the world that, in order to be religious, one *must* to stand in opposition to science. (The hard-core anti-science religious right does the exact same thing to their side, driving people away from religion by making them choose between being religious and being rational.)

As for eating pork, well, that's a matter of simply accepting upon yourself a legal and moral framework written by another. It has nothing whatsoever to do with science, neither for nor against it.

@ Yerushalmi

That means that, if you believe in an omnipotent, omniscient god, and you also believe that evolution is the mechanism by which humans arose on Earth, you *must* believe that evolution took the path it did because god set it up that way.

Yes, but you missed part of my point: It's actually about the "god set it up that way" part of your answer: there is an underlying assumption here, you are using the past tense.
I emphasized how Ben Carson doesn't believe in a standalone evolution. As in, god is playing with it, right now.

I lack the philosophical/theological background to put it in exact words, but I wanted to distinguish between:
- a believer who sees god as a watchmaker: the old guy put the world together, cranked the spring, and now the watch is ticking all by itself. All of its moves may have been planned in details in advance, but right now, it's a standalone process, with strict relations of cause-and-effects between its gears.
- a believer who sees god still walking among us, shaping events on the go.

The 1st believer may only hope to be part of god's plan; the second may hope for the rules to be bend occasionally around him.
The 1st believer won't be tempted to pray for a personal intervention of god in his life. The second will; it may actually be part of his credo. Hence, magical thinking.
From your description, you are close to the first type (with all due respect, I'm not trying to offend).
Ben Carson is of the second type.

I agree I may be going a bit too far with pulling out "magical thinking" out of the bag (eh, now I can say that sometimes i veer off into "scientism"); on the other hand:

A cultural attitude has emerged that says that science and religion are fundamentally incompatible,

But they are.
It's not just science and religion. Similarly, most religions, down to most religion currents, are incompatible with one-another. Only one could be right.
Well, I guess a lot of them could be half-right. That's where the more ecumenical currents stand. To paraphrase Theodore Monod, we are all taking different paths to climb the mountain, and all we can hope is to meet again at the top.

To emphasize, two systems of visualizing the world are incompatible whenever they have different point-of-view on reality.
No matter how you cut it, young earth creationism is incompatible with paleontology, geology, astronomy, biology, archaeology...
And to some extend with theology itself :-)

People with different visions of the way the world is working may try to live side-by-side. Trying to work together may be more difficult.
But a single person having two of these systems coexisting in its head? It will need to compartmentalize, and some parts of each system will have to gave way for the other.
It will be easier if both systems in that person's head are very clear on their limits, and open to change and self-scrutiny. Science could be quite thick-headed with its quest for evidence and facts; any religion generally has a strong, unmovable dogma at its core. That reduces strongly the maneuver room.

tl;dr: when people's metaphysical beliefs collide with science, I would prefer the side with evidence and facts to win.

– a believer who sees god as a watchmaker: the old guy put the world together, cranked the spring, and now the watch is ticking all by itself. All of its moves may have been planned in details in advance, but right now, it’s a standalone process, with strict relations of cause-and-effects between its gears.
– a believer who sees god still walking among us, shaping events on the go.

They are both true. We are G-d, or at least we are paving the way for Him/Her to come. I do not know what happens next.

Yerushalmi #18,

I assume you are responding to me.

Helianthus is making a similar point to mine, and I don't think you are addressing it. Of course one can compartmentalize, and perform scientific experiments while believing that one is communicating/interacting (through prayer or not eating pork or whatever) with a supernatural entity.

But then one must be acting outside either religion or science, which JP may (or may not) be trying to get at.

^ Preparing the way would be a much better choice of words.

A good song.

We have all been doing a good job at holding fast to the truths that we are suited to. Now is the time to work together, and to speak truth to power, and to no longer tolerate lies.

“If scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims.”
― Dalai Lama XIV

I'll see your eastern mystic and raise you a Pat answer,

“You go back in time, you’ve got radiocarbon dating. You got all these things, and you’ve got the carcasses of dinosaurs frozen in time out in the Dakotas, They’re out there. So, there was a time when these giant reptiles were on the Earth, and it was before the time of the Bible. So, don’t try and cover it up and make like everything was 6,000 years....”

“If you fight science, you are going to lose your children, and I believe in telling them the way it was,”

-- Pat Robertson

@ JP

They are both true.

Yes, I wanted to add that believers - and religions themselves - spread the full spectrum between full determination and free will, or whatever I was trying to say.
That worries me is that Ben Carson appears more and more as an extreme on this spectrum. Worse, even when he is in mild-mannered politician mode.

We are G-d, or at least we are paving the way for Him/Her to come.

Eh, careful, you are getting close to the omega point heresy, which almost resulted in the excommunication by the catholic church of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.
OTOH, being compared to Chardin is a big compliment, in my book.

Sidenote: both Teilhard de Chardin and Theodore Monod were deeply religious men and successful scientists - I cannot quote them and not agree with Yerushalmi that it is indeed possible to be both.
Actually, I have worked in scientific labs with people of various religious sensitivity, from mild Catholic or Muslim to hard-line evangelical Calvinism, without much fuss. My misgivings are more about what will happen if my evangelical coworker was to become prime minister. He is very nice and polite and professional, but frankly, I'm not exaggerating by saying I would feel a strong urge to flee the country the day after his election.

I do not know what happens next.

Eh, no need to rush.

#24
Touché.

@Helianthus
I take no offense at anything you're saying. But it's clear that so many of your beliefs about religion are shaped by the prevalence, either in the media or in your personal background or both, of one particular religion, and these criticisms do not apply to almost any other religion.

Most religions are incompatible with one another because they are in *direct contradiction* with one another. I do not argue with this. You either believe in one god or three or seven or seventy or zero.

But religions contradicting one another is not evidence of religion contradicting science; science offers no opinion on the number of gods because nobody has run an experiment with that number as an output.

Applesauce (#15) put up this interesting quote:
“If scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims.”
― Dalai Lama XIV

This is a great quote because it very closely reflects my own beliefs with regards to religion. There's a saying in Orthodox Judaism: "If you think that science and Torah are in contradiction, then either you misunderstood the science, or you misunderstood the Torah." Christianity fought for centuries against the idea that the Earth was not the center of the universe, until eventually it was realized that such a belief wasn't strictly necessary to being a Christian. Similarly, almost every single one of the more ridiculous Jewish beliefs that I've encountered have turned out to come from medieval-era rabbis who based their beliefs on superstitions prevalent at the time. The Talmud at one point describes an argument between the Jewish rabbis and the Greek philosophers about where the sun goes at night, and the discussion in the Jewish religious text ultimately comes down on the side of the Greeks because, it concluded, "their words make [more] sense than our words". (Though, hilariously, the Greeks' reasoning is completely flawed even though they turned out to be right.)

You use young earth creationism as your example, and yes, young earth creationism stands in contrast to almost every branch of science known to man. But that's an example of *one* belief system: a belief system that follows neither the Buddhist principle from Applesauce's quote nor the Jewish principle from mine; a belief system that does not represent even the whole of its own religion, given the Vatican's (and many other Christian sects') lack of a problem with evolution or the scientific age of the universe; a belief system that, yes, is probably stubbornly hanging on to outdated imperalist dogm- sorry, I mean outdated unscientific beliefs not because it is antithetical to their religion but because of the *societal* rifts that cause them to believe that science, as they misinterpret it due to the anti-religious sentiments of its loudest and rudest proponents, is actively attempting to distance them from their religion.

Young earth creationism is infecting Judaism nowadays, for that same societal reason. But it's not part of our belief system, and it never was. I would not be surprised if modern Buddhism is having the same problem.

This is one of my favorite quotes:
https://twitter.com/loresjoberg/status/525035527225892864

I love the Pat Robertson quote. A similar thing was said by Rabbi Natan Slifkin (I don't have the exact words):

"If God invested so much effort in trying to convince me that the universe is billions of years old, why should I believe He is lying?"

“… was basically a rock star whom seemingly everyone admired.” Check.

“… he became more and more famous based on his life story as told in his biography.” Check.

“… started to develop a touch of hubris and that that hubris carried over to his political campaign.” Check.

“… a man who has never held elective office or even run a large organization, such as a company.” Half-a-check.

“… basically lied through his teeth.” Check.

“… even more disappointing to see that he is still pandering.” Check.

“… a walking, talking, nonsense-spewing example demonstrating that a high level of knowledge and skill in one area does not necessarily make one a skeptic.” Check.

That’s six and a half checks for Obama.

SN, the article was not about Obama. You must be confused by the skin color of the subject of this article.

science offers no opinion on the number of gods because nobody has run an experiment with that number as an output.
Russel's teapot much? This is why I find theology so useless...

To Helianthus #19:

“The 1st believer won’t be tempted to pray for a personal intervention of god in his life. The second will; it may actually be part of his credo. Hence, magical thinking.”

Aren’t BOTH believers engaged in “magical thinking”, in your view?
...........
“I agree I may be going a bit too far with pulling out “magical thinking” out of the bag (eh, now I can say that sometimes i veer off into “scientism”)”

And your “scientism” is not science. It’s a philosophy, a world-view.
.........
“A cultural attitude has emerged that says that science and religion are fundamentally incompatible, But they are.”

No, they are not.
Fides ET ratio.
..........
“Similarly, most religions, down to most religion currents, are incompatible with one-another. Only one could be right.”

Agreed! THAT makes sense.

@AdamG: I don't see what Russel's Teapot has to do with anything. I've never claimed that the lack of a disproof indicates that the existence of a god or gods should be assumed. All I'm saying is that the lack of a disproof indicates that the sum totla of our scientific knowledge to date is not actively incompatible with such a belief.

To Yerushalmi #27:

“This is one of my favorite quotes:
https://twitter.com/loresjoberg/status/525035527225892864”

I kind of liked the quote above it:
“If Darwinian evolution applies to religion, then religion must have some evolutionary value.”
.....
I'm a YEC who has sometimes said something similar:
'Don't get mad at me. I just "evolved" this way.' Or
'Don't blame me. Blame evolution.'

Carson has simply realized that to get noticed in today's anti-science and pro-racist republican party you have to say things they like: state that what is believed to be established science really isn't, that what people who don't worship the way the masses do are evil and need to be tracked and kept out of the country, and that facts don't matter (saying you met with someone who wasn't in your city about a scholarship that doesn't exist is good since the subject was a military academy: the fact that it was entirely made up doesn't matter and really is just a "gotcha" question).

In short: to have a chance as a republican candidate, you have to lie through your teeth. That's what makes him appealing to so many on the right: he's one of them.

Also, AdamG, it is precisely that dismissive and condescending attitude towards religion that is contributing to the great science vs. religion rifts in modern American society. I come and say that I represent an example of how the two sides need not fight, and you answer by telling me how useless my beliefs are.

If you instead respect my beliefs, especially seeing as I am in no way trying to convince you to share them, you will demonstrate that you don't have the active hostility towards religion that the religious right in America always assumes the atheist left has.

All I’m saying is that the lack of a disproof indicates that the sum totla of our scientific knowledge to date is not actively incompatible with such a belief.

Isn't that the whole point of burden of proof though? I don't see it as being all that far off from an antivaxer saying 'science has no opinion on autism and vaccines because [insert impossible study here] has not been conducted'

I emphasized how Ben Carson doesn’t believe in a standalone evolution. As in, god is playing with it, right now.

The only clear meaning I can extract from Carson's tergiversation is that 'evolution' is something that 'evolutionists' believe in, but only because they're misinterpreting the evidence. He accepts 'adaptation' but not evolution.

it is precisely that dismissive and condescending attitude towards religion that is contributing to the great science vs. religion rifts in modern American society.

I've seen this tone argument play out a thousand times. No evidence for this statement, as usual.
And I'm out.

I don’t see it as being all that far off from an antivaxer saying ‘science has no opinion on autism and vaccines because [insert impossible study here] has not been conducted’

Science has expressed opinions on autism and vaccines because literally dozens of studies have been done. Waiting for the imaginary perfect study (or using its absence as an excuse) is nowhere near the same thing as expressing an opinion on something that, virtually by definition, cannot be tested. Show me a study that purports to prove the nonexistence of god, and then we'll talk; until then, I'm free to believe what I like, and so are you.

Isn’t that the whole point of burden of proof though?
Where did I set out to prove the existence of god? Why are you making that assumption of me?

Yerushalmi @36:
I come and say that I represent an example of how the two sides need not fight

I have nothing intelligent to contribute on that broader issue, but on the narrow question of Carson's own beliefs and statements, you seem to be offering an excessively charitable reading of his words.

Carson is *not* accepting a kind of divinely-guided evolution, or "evolution as the workings of the divine clockwork". He presents his belief in contrast to what "evolutionists" believe (i.e. that adaptation to the environment is "proof positive" that new species can arise).

#36 Yerushalmi,

"If you instead respect my beliefs..."

But we have no idea what your "beliefs" are, Yerushalmi.

If you follow the various quoted instructions about accepting scientific proof over traditional religious views of the physical universe, then what is it that anyone here is "not respecting"?

If you say that e.g. not eating pork is a choice independent of the claim that God doesn't want you to eat pork, what exactly qualifies you as "religious"? It sounds much more as if you are a Jewish version of Cafeteria Catholic, which is fine, but it is more a choice of cultural identity than a matter of "belief".

Yerushalmi - what does "respect my beliefs" mean in this context? What different actions or statements would be required to show sufficient respect? How do you reconcile that with your previous statements which, if I may be so bold, claim that anyone who says their religious beliefs conflict with science are incorrect?

FWIW, like Stephen Jay Gould I believe that religion and science are non-overlapping magisteria. However, there are those who clearly disagree with me on this.

Some of my best friends are Hubris, and they are not opposed to skepticism.

@herr doktor bimler:
The last paragraph of my very first post (#1) here makes it clear that the differences between our opinions on Carson are not very great:
To be fair, this is highly unlikely to be the case (cf. his idiocy with the pyramids). But on the off chance that it is, it’s not really fair to label him a creationist in the “crank” sense.

@zebra, Mephistopheles:
I was referring to my belief in god in the most general sense. You don't need to know the details about my belief - beyond the fact that it exists - to see that why phrasing "Russel’s teapot much? This is why I find theology so useless…" would be construed as dismissive and condescending.

I will say that I've thought Stephen Jay Gould is an idiot ever since I was twelve years old, when I read the introduction he wrote to one of the Far Side books and noticed that in one of the strips he referenced he utterly failed to get the joke.

Thank you for your conversation.

And please, continue. With dignity and good humor.

Yerushalmi,

I will say that I’ve thought Stephen Jay Gould is an idiot ever since I was twelve years old, when I read the introduction he wrote to one of the Far Side books and noticed that in one of the strips he referenced he utterly failed to get the joke.

I'm surprised by that; are you sure you didn't misunderstand him? I've thought Stephen Jay Gould was brilliant since I too was twelve years old, when my brother bought me a copy of 'Ever Since Darwin'. I loved it, and then read my way through everything he had written that I could get my hands on. My impressions were only reinforced when I attended a lecture he gave in London circa 1989 (about spandrels as I recall), in which he displayed a well-developed sense of humor. I don't agree with him on everything, but I love his style of thinking; I think you may have dismissed him prematurely, which would be a shame.

@ Yerushalmi

But religions contradicting one another is not evidence of religion contradicting science; science offers no opinion on the number of gods because nobody has run an experiment with that number as an output.

I agree, at least in general terms. It was my point about each system needing to know its limits in order to coexist with the other one.
You forget to mention that, in all most known religions, god(s) are notoriously difficult to coerce into cooperating with some scientific experiment...
This is fine by me. Religion is about belief, and beliefs, by definition, is about thinking something is true without evidence of it being true (and also without evidence of it being false - if there was such evidence, it's not a belief, but a delusion).

Connoisseurs will speak about religious beliefs being unfalsifiable: you cannot prove they are wrong. Or right.

On specific terms, religion - well, people talking under the guise of their religious beliefs - does contradict science from time to time, like when Carson talked bout the pyramids being Joseph's granaries.
That's an assertion which could be assessed scientifically. Heck, forget the scientists in a labcoat, anyone with some knowledge on how to store grains can go and check by itself. Pyramids aren't designed for grain storage.
That doesn't make Carson's religion wrong; but it does make him wrong and him using his religious beliefs wrongly.

Again, my misgivings are about when facts and beliefs collide.

but because of the *societal* rifts that cause them to believe that science, as they misinterpret it due to the anti-religious sentiments of its loudest and rudest proponents, is actively attempting to distance them from their religion.

Yerushalmi, please don't school me on "anti-religious sentiments". You get it easy.
All your non-fully secular countries (US, Israel...) got are "loud and rude proponents" for a little less religion in the streets. (and unfortunately, the occasional gunman on a rampage)
But you still have freedom of religion. And your countries are still religious countries. You can go to your church of choice whenever you want. Nasty atheists are not running around blasting themselves to smithereens.
What atheists (and mild agnostics like myself) want is freedom from religion. You don't get the right to tell me the lie that the Earth is 4000 years old or that the Garden of Eden is East of the Himalaya; you certainly don't have the right to lead a policy based on any of this.

That my country had, a little more than a century ago, was an anti-clerical government who went out of its way to separate church and state.
They had some good reasons for this; notably it had more to do about the secular activities of the Catholic church than its theological message.
Still, during this period, the state was actively suppressing religious freedom. There is no other word.
I'm pretty sure any historian can come with dozens of tales of anti-religious oppression in other countries.

So, when you complain about "anti-religious sentiments", give me a break. Newflash: the world is a large place, and you cannot expect everybody to like you. People have the right to think this whole religion thingy is sh!t. Even if I think they are id!ots for annoying people publicly with their opinion.

You spend a lot of text explaining to me how religious people - or at least your coreligionists - can still make good scientists, because they are not afraid of confronting their beliefs, and vice-versa. As it happens, I agree that this is possible and that it is happening.

I will leave you with another pearl of wisdom from a religious friend of mine: when a relationship is going sour, both parties are responsible for it.
I will grant you that the atheist movement certainly has its share of imbeciles in its ranks. Human nature is the same everywhere.
But when you complain about these rude atheists disgusting your fellow believers from science, it sounds to me like they still have trouble having their beliefs questioned. They may misinterpret science because they want to.

And frankly, these weeks are a bad time to tell me that religious people are fair-minded. Do some effort to clean your ranks of your crazies, and we will clean ours. Deal?

I’m saying is that the lack of a disproof indicates that the sum totla of our scientific knowledge to date is not actively incompatible with such a belief.

Well, the smart religions have all moved on to making unfalsifiable claims, so science can say nothing about their validity. With that, it all comes down to a matter of what you find interesting and what sorts of priors you find plausible.

And I find the idea that some unphysical intelligence created the physical universe to be very implausible, and it leads to a nasty recursion problem. To me, the universe simply exists, and the great and probably unanswerable mystery is why there is something rather than nothing. Anthorpomorphizing this mystery seems childish to me.

And that, for once, is all.

To Yerushalmi:

I don’t know what complement of religious beliefs is considered orthodox for an Orthodox Jew, but what do you believe about this verse from the Jewish scriptures (i.e. Old Testament)?

“And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.” Daniel 12:2.

Yerushalmi #45,

"...beyond the fact that it exists..."

But that is not a "fact" at all. That is simply your assertion.

Yerushalmi, I'd like to apologize for being so flippant before. It was entirely unnecessary and driven by my previous unpleasant experiences surrounding this topic.

All movements for social change are composed of people with wildly differing philosophies, and the least effective strategy for change is infighting.

See Noevo

Shut up, you piece of shit!

zebra 52 -- The "it" in Yerushalmi's post refers to his belief, which evidently exists

Although I don't believe in an extraphysical God, there is no question that God exists as an idea that many people believe. My own reconciliation with religion is to consider God to be a placeholder, so to speak, for the sense that many of us have that there are important things that are bigger than any of us, and for the instinct to empathize with others. Or something like that.

I dismiss the silly claims of religion, but I sure don't dismiss those overarching ideas.

I will reprise a point I made on Dave original Facebook post when he commented on the New York Times article: What seems to have happened to Dr 'Gifted Hands' is that he has indeed developed a severe case of hubris, brought on, in my view, by too many people saying how great he was for too long, and starting too early in his life. His age has only accentuated these difficulties, as when we age, our basic personal traits often become even more ingrained. And not only that, he has also spent too much time in revival meetings and other such stops on the Praise the lord circuit; he now - literally - thinks he sits at the right hand of Jesus Christ himself. He has, in short, been creating his own bullshit for so long, he actually believes it.

OT, I know, but pretty proud to be an Aussie today :
http://m.gladstoneobserver.com.au/news/no-jab-no-play-laws-passed/28507…
Seems that the guvmint has seen sense and backed SBM over anti-vax woo, by hitting where it hurts - right in the wallet !

Of course I couldn't stay out of this one, if only to change the topic back to Ben Carson.
I also read the Times profile, and I was impressed by the loyalty he inspired in his PA. That AAPA wanted to honor him shows that he must be a strong ally of and contributor to the PA profession, and that this was cancelled suggests his opinions were well beyond the pale - PAs are politically and philosophically a very mixed bunch or people. PAs are like that old joke about Jews that if you ask two you'll get three opinions.
Getting back to his hubris, which I don't doubt is the correct word, and in spite of his sedate(d) appearance, an observation by Hunter S Thompson applies to him. As the good doctor said, every politician has to have a little kinky streak of Mick Jagger in him, and it's there in Carson too. He loves the adulation of the crowd, and he's got a kind of counter-political appeal that I think he cultivates to make himself stand out. This inner Mick Jagger lives very nicely alongside quiet hubris, just as it does with Donald Trumpery's self-aggrandizement and megalomania, or Chris Christie's crassness (or should we just call him Chrass Christie?).

#49 "People have the right to think this whole religion thingy is sh!t. Even if I think they are id!ots for annoying people publicly with their opinion."

I'm not entirely clear why it seems to be okay for believers discuss their beliefs but, should one thing the whole thing is a pile of horse pucky, it's some how rude or not nice or insensitive to state that.

Carson's religious beliefs are deeply disturbing to me. I suppose I should be grateful he is so public about them as it means I know he's not a man I'd trust with the running of my country. As if the anti-vax stuff wasn't enough.

@Krebiozen
You shouldn't take that statement *THAT* seriously :)

@Helianthus
Wow. You just brought in a LOT of straw-man arguments:
* What does anti-religious *oppression* have anything to do with my assertion that our culture has created an environment of religious opposition to science and vice versa? I'm not saying "religious people have it bad". I'm only saying that an environment has been created in which religious authorities and rationalists seem to believe their two groups cannot intersect.
* Why do you bring that "pearl of wisdom" into this discussion? I've said multiple times in the earlier posts of this thread that modern evangelical Christianity is responsible for much of the attitude that religion must be in opposition to science; my later posts, which lack this even-handedness, are addressed to the hostility towards religion expressed by people *in this thread*.
* What does Islamic terrorism have anything to do with my assertion that you can be religious and yet be rational? And in the context of that terrorism, telling somebody *Jewish* to "clean my ranks of the crazies" is a low blow.

@palindrom
The smart religions have moved on to making *mostly* unfalsifiable claims, yes. But almost every religion has a history that can at least in part be verified. For instance, it is fashionable to claim that many things in the Bible are metaphorical and not literal, and to claim that god's omnipotence allows him to weasel out of any test you might conduct that is designed to reveal his existence. You can say that god, being omnipotent, wrote the Torah in such-and-such a fashion so that it would fool later generations of linguistic investigators, for example. But there is only so far one can move the goalposts before anybody's faith snaps under the strain, including mine. So while the core belief in an omnipotent being may be unfalsifiable, the surrounding beliefs that support it certainly can be.

@See Noevo: I'm not familiar enough with the book of Daniel, I'm afraid.

@zebra: palindrom has it right. My belief is something that exists; I make no assertions to you about god.

@AdamG: Apology accepted. Thank you. I certainly believe that those of us who are rationalists - regardless of our positions on religion - ought to fight together against the irrationality that is sweeping modern religion. (And, before the obvious objection is brought up, I will remind you that I am Jewish, not Christian; my religion has *always* had a rich vein of rationalism, and it is only recently that some authorities have begun to reject its legitimacy.)

@Meg: I have no problem with people telling me they think my beliefs are stupid, but there are ways to say it without being condescending, dismissive, or offensive. Palindrom's objections to religion, for example, are a good example of how to express it.

Please, tell your truths proudly. We have all done very well, and we have much to be grateful for - from each other. Don't forget to be excellent to each other. I think I might go on holiday for a while, but I'll be dropping in and out to hang our with all you lovely, intelligent people.

^ hang out.

@ Yerushalmi

Wow. You just brought in a LOT of straw-man arguments:

Maybe.
Although I think that , due to a bit of cultural difference, we are talking past each other.

What does anti-religious *oppression* have anything to do with my assertion that our culture has created an environment of religious opposition to science and vice versa?

- I over-reacted, thinking how atheists/free-thinkers movements in US are framed as "war on Christianity".
- I also wanted to put things into perspective. A local group of vocal anti-religious people is not the same threat on religion as a state-enabled anti-religious policy.

Let me put it this way: your paragraph about rude anti-religious goons gave me the impression you were playing the oppressed minority card. It riled me up.
You weren't, and I apologize for this.

At the same time, I was trying to tell you that, from my little experience in USA, we in France went a lot further into separating religious expression and public life. A French president who "prays for his enemies" while declaring war will be laughed out of office.
(although, recently, there have been a surge of "France has Christian roots" politicians; but it's disguised racism rather than religion bigotry)

In this context, what you see as rude anti-religious expression may be considered normal in my country and doesn't stop us from being religious. We are expected to heavily compartmentalize our religious beliefs and our professional life and accept it as routine.
In short, you may see your country as secular, but for me, you country is still deeply religious. So we don't have the same reaction to people saying "bring less religion in professional/public life".

What does Islamic terrorism have anything to do with my assertion that you can be religious and yet be rational?

Religious-based violence is not the monopoly of Islam.

And in the context of that terrorism, telling somebody *Jewish* to “clean my ranks of the crazies” is a low blow.

Should we let the discussion veer off into Israel politics? Not so long ago, Ariel Sharon's government was entertaining the idea of expanding current borders to match the Old Testament borders (the Great Israel).
Sharon since recanted on the idea, but still. There are still hyper-religious Jews to entertain the idea (along with a few hyper-religious US Christians, who see the restoration of Jerusalem temple as a necessary step before the second coming of Christ),

I see it as a prime example of religion driving (bad) politics.
The Israel-Middle Eastern conflict is a lot more complex than just a religious war. Just the geo-politic aspect of resources access is a diplomatic nightmare.
But the local interactions of the three Abrahamic religions are not helping. And I am sorry, but each side does have its share of crazies.

But I agree my shot was a bit dirty.
If anything, you are not responsible for anyone I deem "crazy" and on "your" side (emphasis on "I deem" - my opinion, my biases).

Yerushalmi (and also for Palindrom),

This is one of those concepts that must be spelled out very carefully, I suppose:

I am not questioning an assertion that God exists.

I am questioning your assertion that you believe God exists.

It is no more possible to prove or disprove the latter than the former.

The point is, Y, that you are claiming some authority based on this untestable internal state, which is not much different from someone telling me that he knows the truth because God speaks to him.

If you want to make a case in the context of a nuanced, psycho-social, scientific analysis of human behavior, by all means have at it. I would argue, for example, following on from Helianthus' point about the ME, that you could explain suicide bombers without invoking religion at all.

But I don't think your personal philosophical viewpoint, whatever it might be, is at all relevant to the actions and reactions of the groups in question.

I appreciate the apology, Helianthus. I will also point out that I don't actually live in the US; religious Jews in Israel are certainly not an "oppressed minority".

The reason I said you were talking about Islamic terrorism is because you said I shouldn't discuss being religious and fair-minded in "these weeks", and you're from France. It wasn't that much of a leap. :)

I don't want to get into a discussion of Israeli politics either, but I should just point out that hyper-religious Jews are not the ones who espouse Greater Israel philosophies; in fact, the more hyper-religious they are, the less they support (and, after a certain threshold, the more they *actively oppose*) the existence of the State of Israel. Some links:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edah_HaChareidis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satmar_%28Hasidic_dynasty%29#Satmar_and_t…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neturei_Karta

There are other misconceptions in your post as well but I *really* don't want to get into the discussion.

@zebra
All I said is that it's not hard to imagine how somebody who believes in god, such as me, might find a particular phrasing condescending or offensive. I have no idea what you're trying to say in disputing that I believe in god.

# 27 Yerushalmi
Christianity fought for centuries against the idea that the Earth was not the center of the universe

Excuse me but this is nonsense overall. The Catholic Church, at least, did not fight against this the idea but rather refused to change a earth-centred model for a helio-centered model without adequate proof. Certainly the Catholic Church had no real problem with the idea as long as it could be convincingly demontrated and for a good century or so it could not be untill future research showed that the helio-centric proposition was a better explanation of the data.

In fact, the Church's position was just the same as the Dalai Lama's that you posted.\If scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims.”
― Dalai Lama XIV

"Stop badmouthing and lying about our future president Ben Carson! It's mean! And it makes you all seem ridiculous. Obama is much worse! The worst, bloody communist muslim immigrant."
"We're not lying, we're just asking him to explain what he said." says someone from the audience.
"You liberals are trying to smear him! It's all lies!"
"There's recordings of him saying those things, evidence-"
"Bah! Evidence, shmevidence, who believes in those things anyway. Bible says it all, the age of the Creation and how even Jews belive in the afterlife!"
"Somehow it doesn't surprise me that guy is a young earth creationist..." whispers one spectator to another, while holding the camera.
"It's not his fault, it's just that he was createth dumb."

(pause)

Irritated by the giggling from the audience, See Noevo stomps the stage hard in anger. "Now listen!" he shouts, before to muster a calmer demeanor and an air of reasonable discussion. "I took time off my busy and incredibly important schedule of studying the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact to be here for you people, so you should accept what I have to say without questions."

(pause)

"And when you think about it, isn't that what honest debate is all about?"
"No." answers the audience.
"Shut up, I wasn't asking!" shrieks See Noevo.

@ Yerushalmi

Two points I would like to clarify, because I feel I was not clear enough, and it's bugging me since yesterday it could have been seen as offensive:

In conflating the generalized belief in God with “magical thinking”

Actually, I was trying not to:
- by magical thinking, I meant the act of believing that the universe will make an exception for the believer.
Believing in an afterlife or that some supernatural entity is watching over you is not.
Believing that you can jump off a cliff and said supernatural entity will catch you is magical thinking.*
I guess I could have just said religion-based hubris. Or just hubris: magical thinking is not necessarily linked to a given religion, or to any religion.
Note that I am not judging on the existence - or non-existence - of miracles; just on the belief that a miracle will happen.

- dogma: I was using the term in a non-pejorative way. I meant by it the core beliefs and rituals of a given religion/set of beliefs; the ones by which one identifies itself and its fellow coreligionists.

* If someone is already on the way down, I certainly won't blame it for hoping for a magical rescue.

@ Yerushalmi

There are other misconceptions in your post

Oh. Fair enough.
Eh, I'll have learned something today.

jrkrideau #66,

It might be more accurate to say that many in physics were reluctant to embrace a position that, given what was generally accepted as Church doctrine, might alienate a powerful entity and its followers. You can hardly suggest that there were not factions within the Church (as there are today) less open to change.

But you are quite correct that the numbers were still with epicycles for a while there.

@Helianthus
I saw nothing wrong with the use of the word "dogma". As for "magical thinking", I don't entirely see how prayers for intercession relate to evolution, which was when the first term was brought up.

Yerushalmi #65,

You have no idea what I am trying to say? How could I be any more clear than saying that "God exists" and "I believe God exists" are equally empty statements?

It may be that you empathize with people who profess belief, but your claim that the empathy is because you Believe is unsupported. And that's what you are claiming.

I have no idea what you're trying to say *in this context*.

p = I believe God exists.
q = I found statement x to be hurtful.

How does the verifiability of p in any way change your ability to evaluate the statement p->q?

Yerushalmi,

Let's dispense with trying to use logical symbols, which is really a form of distraction. The validity of

"I found statement x to be hurtful because I believe God exists"

obviously depends on the validity of the second part.

If I say "I found this racist comment offensive because I'm an African American", it would not be true.

Do you really not understand that?

As Carson tries to wiggle out from the flaps over fabricating stuff in his autobiography, some of what he HASN'T made up shows more hubris than the his inventions or stretching of the truth..

His oft repeated claim he was offered a scholarship to West Point caps a narrative arc of extraordinary boot-strapping, in which he takes control of his of life, and transforms himself from the young 'thug' who stabbed a friend and only escaped being a murderer by the hand of God's belt-buckle into a thoroughly disciplined and respected young-man-headed-for-great-things. He says he received the 'scholarship offer' after having dinner with William Westmoreland on Memorial Day 1969, having been selected to attend dinner with the General by virtue of being "the highest student ROTC member in Detroit." Here's how he describes this momentus day in Healing Hands:

"I felt so proud, my chest bursting with ribbons and braids of every kind. To make it more wonderful, we had important visitors that day. Two soldiers who had won the Congressional Medal of Honor in Viet Nam were present. More exciting to me, General William Westmoreland (very prominent in the Viet Nam war) attended with an impressive entourage. Afterward, Sgt. Hunt introduced me to General Westmoreland, and I had dinner with him and the Congressional Medal winners. Later I was offered a full scholarship to West Point.

Lets forget about the 'scholarship, as it's merely a footnote to the paragraph, and focus on what no one's disputing:
• In 1969 Carson was the highest ranked Junior ROTC candidate in Detroit.
• He was more excited to meet William Westmoreland than to meet Medal of Honor winners.
• He knew Westmoreland had recently returned to the U.S. and a Pentagon post after having been the commander of U.S. forces in Viet Nam during the height of the war.
• He was very impressed by Westmoreland's entourage.
By 1969, only utter tools were proud of being in ROTC. After Tet and Chicago, revelations about body-counts and possible atrocities, anyone with an ounce of critical thinking skills and/or intellectual humility was rethinking the Vietnam War and American militarism and imperialism in general. Parading in front of a ROTC group bursting with pride at your chest full of non-combat) medals took considerable hubris.

But not as much as recounting the incident the way Carson did in his book. He writes about how "wonderful" it had been to meet Westmoreland? The general who said:

The Oriental doesn't put the same high price on life as does a Westerner. ... We value life and human dignity. They don't care about life and human dignity.

...while instituting 'kill anything that moves' tactics that resulted in massive civilian casualties, and then covering-up the atrocities like My Lai that inevitably followed? It was bad enough he couldn't manage critical thinking on Vietnam in 1969. That his head could be so far under the sand in 2003 boggles the mind

But that's probably indicative of why Carson is polling up there with The Donald:

Here is the thing. The central and sacrosanct tenet of 21st century conservatism—the core ethic against which to judge a Republican politician’s fidelity and consistency—is not fiscal prudence, or the preservation of social tradition, or even cold post-human market rationality. It’s flailing, entitled hostility toward the very notion of reason. Trump and Carson are at the middle of the debate stage, Fiorina and Rubio and poor Rand Paul on it at all, because what they say is ridiculous, because them saying things about policy and policymaking is itself ridiculous, because they rather obviously are the most ridiculous people to take seriously when they say pretty much anything at all. They’re there to express an idea: Refusal.

Do you want to stay here and play some more?
No!
Okay, well, then, let’s pack up our stuff and head home.
No!
Uh, well, sweetie, we have to either stay or go.
I don’t want to!
You don’t want to what?
I don’t know!

Tired and cranky, arms crossed, glassy eyes pinched shut, heads swiveling back and forth in simple stubborn refusal. You can’t make me! I don’t wanna! Refusing everything. The point is refusal...

The thing those eight clowns were put there to conserve isn’t money, or tradition, or individual liberty, or some proud American heritage. The constituency... empirically and emphatically does not give a fuck about any of those things. The thing being conserved is a fantasy, and a privileged, childish one: that the universe bends itself to the pieties and self-assurances and red-faced insistences of the entitled; that truth comes from authority and not the other way around; that I don’t give a good goldang what some fancypants “math” book says, under my roof two plus two equals five and don’t you forget it. – Albert Burneko

jrkrideau #66
The Church certainly did fight the heliocentric model.
You often hear the woo-ful say "They laughed at Galileo." They did no such thing. He scared the living piss out of the Church. It had a major investment of intellectual and moral capital in geocentrism. At the same time they had nothing to refute him with. They allowed him to publish, but only if he cast it as an intellectual exercise. He failed to do so to their satisfaction, and instead put his ideas in a dialogue in which the Church positions were defended by a character intended to be seen as a fool and simpleton. This led to his trial and so forth.
At least that's how I learned it, to the best of my recall (I have no fear that any error I have made will go uncorrected (although I do fear that things I've gotten right will also be corrected)).

Excuse me but this is nonsense overall. The Catholic Church, at least, did not fight against this the idea but rather refused to change a earth-centred model for a helio-centered model without adequate proof.

Ah, well, that explains why the Inquisition ordered Galileo to abandon "the opinion that the sun stands still at the center of the world and the earth moves, and henceforth not to hold, teach, or defend it in any way whatever, either orally or in writing." The banning of all books about the Copernican system (including Kepler's) was merely a courtesy detail.

@zebra
I'll start with the really tiny picture objection and move on to the big-picture objection.
1) You are objecting to this statement:
You don’t need to know the details about my belief – beyond the fact that it exists – to see that why phrasing “Russel’s teapot much? This is why I find theology so useless…” would be construed as dismissive and condescending.
All that's said in this statement is that, if you assume that somebody believes in god, they would find that statement dismissive and condescending. Arguing against the assumption doesn't argue against the logical progression that follows from the assumption. "Unicorns don't exist" is not an argument against "if a unicorn had wings, then it could fly".

2) Think about what you are ultimately asserting here: that you have the right to disregard somebody's feelings absolutely, just because it cannot be proven that those feelings are genuine. That is not a good model of interpersonal interactions.

“If Darwinian evolution applies to religion, then religion must have some evolutionary value.”

Of course, Darwinian evolution doesn't apply to religion...

Yerushalmi #78,

I think I've been quite clear about my point, starting with my pretty benign and non-controversial first comment, and have no interest in repeating myself.

You are misinterpreting it for whatever reason-- perhaps you have doubts about your faith and my observations make you uncomfortable, so you are trying to change the subject. That's OK, it's all part of the journey.

You are misinterpreting it for whatever reason

Yes, you complain about this often. It's an outstandingly stupid example in this case.

It says in Genesis 1, in the beginning God created heaven and earth. Period. We don’t know how long that period is before he started the rest of creation. It could be a minute. It could be a trillion years. We don’t know. I have never stated that I have an understanding of how old the earth is.

Carson seems to be making it clear that he is not interested in any scientific evidence.

He is only interested in what is written in his Bible.

How does this make him any different from Ken Ham?

At least we have a current president who’s knowledgeable about science, and even uses it to fight the biggest worry on people’s minds:

“Next week, I will be joining President Hollande and world leaders in Paris for the global climate conference. WHAT A POWERFUL REBUKE TO THE TERRORISTS IT WILL BE, when the world stands as one and shows that we will not be deterred from building a better future for our children.”
– Barack Obama

http://www.climatedepot.com/2015/11/24/obama-says-paris-climate-confere…

I feel so much better.

See Noevo, if you don't wake up and get over yourself, you are going to go to Hell.

SN, I just read the comments on that climate depot page you made reference to. Nice bunch of friends you have there.

SN, I just read the comments on that climate depot page you made reference to.

At least S.N. recycles.

Old Rockin' Dave #76:

The Church certainly did fight the heliocentric model...
At least that’s how I learned it, to the best of my recall

That's what everyone "learns", but in reality it's more complicated than that.
The church was mostly neutral on the matter. At that time, the evidence, as it was, supported geocentricity better than heliocentricity. It was only with the advent of better telescopes that the evidence swung towards the latter.
The problem the church faced is that it didn't want to be seen to flip-flop. If it endorsed heliocentricity and then later data proved geocentricity, that could damage its image, or so it feared.
Another problem was that even though Galileo was ultimately correct, he was a jerk about it. The church wanted him to frame the discussion as a "thought exercise" and include a line because of the aforementioned weakness of the data. Galileo did so, but put the line in the mouth of a character who was written to be a fool.
Of course, it's even more complicated than what I've written, but it's not as simple as "church fixated on geocentrism".

Julian Frost,

Another problem was that even though Galileo was ultimately correct, he was a jerk about it.

Galileo lived the rest of his life under house arrest to shut him up.

It took the church hundreds of years to admit the mistake.

You, and other defenders of the Church, pretend that Galileo was the jerk.

All Galileo did was educate people about science.

Because science exposed the problems with the Church's mandated "Christian science," Galileo was confined to his house for the rest of his life.

If Galileo had been less famous, the church might have burned him at the stake, as they did with others they convicted of heresy.

Yet, you claim that Galileo was a jerk for advancing science. Brilliant!

Rogue Medic:

Yet, you claim that Galileo was a jerk for advancing science. Brilliant!

No, I claim he was a jerk because he was obnoxious towards geocentrists when the evidence wasn't yet definitive. The fact that it's definitive now doesn't change the fact that back then it wasn't.
Nice ad hominem, by the way.

Dudes, chill out.

Entirely OT: That is an extremely flattering picture of Dr. Carson. So much so that if people were into electing physicians and I was in his camp, I'd recommend using it for his campaign.

Julian Frost, # 87
You say "...The church was mostly neutral on the matter".
Well, I think it is inaccurate. Catholic Church had a vested interest in saying that Sun revolved around Earth, because this is what its Holy Book had said (Joshua 12 f). And no Holy Church can admit errors in The Book.
As Karl Popper says (Three Views Concerning Human Knowledge), "... There was no objection to Galileo's teaching the mathematical theory, so long as he made it clear that its value was instrumental only , as Cardinal Bellarmino put it; a kind of mathematical trick, invented and assumed in order to abbreviate and ease the calculations.... Galileo himself, of course, was very ready to stress the superiority of the Copernican system as an instrument of calculation. But at the same time he conjectured, and even believed, that it was a true description of the world; and for him (as for the Church) this was by far the most important aspect of the matter".

Julian Frost,

No, I claim he was a jerk because he was obnoxious towards geocentrists when the evidence wasn’t yet definitive.

Being obnoxious toward people who lock up the people they disagree with is not being a jerk.

Being obnoxious toward people who kill the people they disagree with is not being a jerk.

But you will probably keep claiming that Galileo was the jerk, not those who persecuted scientists.

To perodatrent #93:

“Well, I think it is inaccurate. Catholic Church had a vested interest in saying that Sun revolved around Earth, because this is what its Holy Book had said (Joshua 12 f). And no Holy Church can admit errors in The Book.”

Where does Scripture say the sun revolves around the earth?

To Julian Frost and jrkrideau:

Thanks for the Galileo posts.

Is it also true that Galileo was proposing the false idea that the sun was the center of the universe, not just the center of our solar system?

But you will probably keep claiming that Galileo was the jerk, not those who persecuted scientists.

Lovely strawman there. I never said that the Vatican weren't jerks. Oh, and please stop presuming to tell me what I am or am not thinking. You have no idea how wrong you are about me.
And remember what I said about the evidence for geocentrism? Galileo was being a jerk to everyone who believed in geocentrism. Until he and Copernicus came along, the majority viewpoint was geocentrism and he insulted everyone.

“If Darwinian evolution applies to religion, then religion must have some evolutionary value.”

Of course religion – or rather the mental character that seems to establish a 'preference' for religious belief – has evolutionary value, serving a variety of functions that help get the 'chosen' genes into the next generation. That doesn't mean there's a God, or that any piece of dogma is necessarily correct. If anything, the proliferation of so many different religious beliefs among the species shows that while belief has an evolutionary function, the content of that belief is essentially irrelevant, as long as it serves the socio-behavioral functions of natural selection for creatures inhabiting a specific environment.

Keepin' it cool, sadmar.

“If Darwinian evolution applies to religion, then religion must have some evolutionary value.”

Bull. First of all, define religion. Second, evolution is an ongoing dynamic process. We're not looking at perfect end states, but adaptations to conditions that may or may not be successful to varying degrees for varying populations in the long run. It should be trivially obvious to anyone paying attention to politics that as a group, humans are chock full of buggy software.

Julian Frost,

Lovely strawman there. I never said that the Vatican weren’t jerks.

Locking people up and killing people for discussing science is far worse than being jerks.

Science depends on criticism of hypotheses, not on manners.

Being a jerk is how science progresses, but you object to that when you state that any scientist was a jerk for explaining his thinking about the evidence.

Oh, and please stop presuming to tell me what I am or am not thinking. You have no idea how wrong you are about me.

Will you keep claiming that Galileo was a jerk?

I expect that you will, even though that is not telling you what you are thinking. I am just making a prediction based on the evidence you have provided.

Let's see if you continue to call Galileo a jerk.

And remember what I said about the evidence for geocentrism? Galileo was being a jerk to everyone who believed in geocentrism.

I was right.

You are the one creating straw men, but you accuse others of what you are doing. Either you don't know what you are doing or you are completely dishonest.

It would be wrong for me to pretend that I know which applies to you, because that would be pretending to read your mind. I don't do that, no matter how much you claim otherwise. Anyone can look at our discussion and see the truth.

Go ahead.

Until he and Copernicus came along, the majority viewpoint was geocentrism and he insulted everyone.

Promoting an alternative hypothesis is insulting to those who have not yet been persuaded by the evidence?

Providing evidence to support that alternative hypothesis is insulting.

We need to stop learning, because it will be insulting to those with entrenched faulty beliefs!

A reasonable person might conclude that we need more jerks like Galileo and fewer people like you.

Guuuuuys, relax. Keep it cool. Be excellent to each other.

Maybe it's time for a nice cold beer, or whatever it is you like. No need to worry about time zones; you can drink at 7 AM if you want to. The Beastie Boys fought for that kinda thing.

Another good song. (I think I like this guy.)

Julian Frost - By the time of Galileo, geocentrism had been in increasing trouble for hundreds of years. Proponents had been forced into ever more intricate rationalizations in the attempt to keep it alive in the face of better observations and better math. Galileo's telescopic observations of Jupiter's moons was pretty much the coup de grace.The Church was aware of this, and was unable to refute him and knew it. Various Church fathers came to look through his telescope; most were impressed, though at least one claimed that the view through his telescope was nothing but an elaborate trick (and who more than a clergyman would know about elaborate trickery?).
There are numerous verses in the Bible that are not only geocentric, but flat-Earth:
1 Chronicles 16:30: “He has fixed the earth firm, immovable.”
Psalm 93:1: “Thou hast fixed the earth immovable and firm ...”
Psalm 96:10: “He has fixed the earth firm, immovable ...”
Psalm 104:5: “Thou didst fix the earth on its foundation so that it never can be shaken.”
Isaiah 45:18: “...who made the earth and fashioned it, and himself fixed it fast...”
The Church of course was heavily invested in Biblical inerrancy, so could not in the end endorse a finding that overturned it, no matter how powerful the evidence.
This article on the Bible as a source for flat-Earthers gives a good idea of the Biblical conception of the skies: https://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/febible.htm

To Old Rockin’ Dave #105:

The verses you quote have nothing to do with a stationary earth but rather with a lasting earth.

Unless you think the Bible is saying the wicked shall never change physical positions:
“In the pride of his countenance the wicked does not seek him; all his thoughts are, "There is no God."
He thinks in his heart, "I SHALL NOT BE MOVED;
throughout all generations I shall not meet adversity."
[Psalm 10:4,6]

Or you think the righteous are physically frozen in place:
“who does not put out his money at interest,
and does not take a bribe against the innocent.
He who does these things SHALL NEVER BE MOVED.” [Psalm 15:5]
…………..
I’m not aware of any place Scripture says the sun revolves around the earth or vice versa.

See Noevo:

Chill, man. Go drink a beer or walk the dog or smoke a reefer or something. Whatever helps you. We've all been real tense for a long damn time. Just relax.

The verses you quote have nothing to do with a stationary earth but rather with a lasting earth.

Lasting is good. We're gonna last a looooooong time, friends and neighbors.

See Noevo,

The verses you quote have nothing to do with a stationary earth but rather with a lasting earth.

That is one of the many problems with the Bible.

It can be used to justify whatever you want, depending on which verse you quote and what interpretation you use.

The Ku Klux Klan appear to be just as sincere in their interpretation of the Bible as Pat Robertson or Mike Huckabee.

They all use their interpretations to promote immorality.

The Bible is the vaguest, most relative book in history.

There is nothing that all Christians agree on - except that there was something special about Jesus.

God thinks like the believer, because there isn't any credible source to tell us what the people who wrote the Bible meant and they probably had very different beliefs, but they ended up in the same series of books with no editor.

The Bible is the vaguest, most relative book in history.

There's a reason for that.

JP, you are doing the good work here! I lift my stone-cold cup of tea to your persistence and calm demeanor.

Maybe everyone just needs a nice cuppa.

I lift my stone-cold cup of tea to your persistence and calm demeanor.

Some of the chillest amongst us are a bit Asian in demeanor. ;) The tea ceremony is a real nice thing... lovely manners.

The oh-so-cool JP may be right.
Just chill. Everything’s under control.
Like he says here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3epkCVAx0F8

Things couldn’t be better.

Although JP #84 also says in holiday jest that I’m self-absorbed and going to hell.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Although JP #84 also says in holiday jest that I’m self-absorbed and going to hell.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Different truths are appropriate for different times. Please come along with us. This is an honest plea. It just won't be as much fun without you. And I, for one, would be very sorry if you missed the boat.

Let’s see if you continue to call Galileo a jerk.

Galileo was a jerk; I don't think that was in dispute. It is the one point on which his contemporaries could agree.
But Julian Frost is hardly offering an exculpation for the Catholic Church of the day by arguing that the Pope silenced Galileo and placed him under house arrest primarily for being a jerk, rather than primarily for being a heliocentrist.

Promoting an alternative hypothesis is insulting to those who have not yet been persuaded by the evidence?
We need to stop learning, because it will be insulting to those with entrenched faulty beliefs!

Another strawman. Casting the believers in geocentrism as ignorant simpletons was insulting. And yes, your comment is presuming to tell me what I am or am not thinking.

A reasonable person might conclude that we need more jerks like Galileo and fewer people like you.

A reasonable person would realise you're replacing arguments with logical fallacies.
With regards to what I said about the evidence at the time favouring geocentrism:
http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2010/09/13/geocentrism-was-gali…

In fact, by even the late 1500s, 50 years after Copernicus, this geocentric explanation was far-and-away the most superior way to predict what the positions of the planets would be.

Getting back to my point...
Geocentrism predates the church by centuries. To cast the events as "church sticking to a ridiculous viewpoint and shutting up Galileo" is a monumental and grotesque oversimplification of what actually happened.

But Julian Frost is hardly offering an exculpation for the Catholic Church of the day by arguing that the Pope silenced Galileo and placed him under house arrest primarily for being a jerk, rather than primarily for being a heliocentrist.

herr dokter bimler gets my point.

A song for SN:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEKuGcmW70I

Julian Frost@87:

The church wanted him to frame the discussion as a “thought exercise” and include a line because of the aforementioned weakness of the data. Galileo did so, but put the line in the mouth of a character who was written to be a fool.

Even worse, Galileo's Simplicio was not just any old fool, but a detectable parody of Pope Urban himself. He was damn fortunate in being old and famous enough that this was only a career-ending move: questioning Biblical infallibility is one thing, openly insulting the Vicar of Rome quite another.

And I, for one, would be very sorry if you missed the boat.

You're talking about someone who can't even find the pond, here.

While I'm giving thanks for Orac and my fellow Orac-minions, I still have more to say on Galileo.
Obviously the Church was heavily invested in geocentrism - they put him on trial for heresy, for pity's sake, for contravening Church doctrine. Clearly it wasn't merely a polite difference of opinion. The went so far as to show him the instruments of torture, the last step before actually using them, so clearly they took a serious view. That has nothing to do with whether or not he may have been a jerk. Being a jerk is not heresy, or the Church would have disappeared long before, and not usually a capital crime or maybe our ancestors would have exterminated each other while still in the trees.
Now, SN, you may read biblical verses any way you choose, which is what you and everyone else will do anyway, but however you read them has nothing to do with how the Church read them.
Besides, the Church had adopted the geocentric cosmology of Ptolemy as doctrine. Cosmology was serious business in those days.

Today I give thanks that JP is here, and shillin' for chillin'. We're all passengers on that boat going across the Styx, but the ride is gonna last a looong time, so we should indeed relax and have some fun before we reach the other shore.

Yes, "be most excellent to each other". But I'm not a SoCal dude, so I have a different film reference to invoke based on where I grew up. In A Serious Man Danny goes through his Bar Mitzvah stoned on weed, and then is taken to see the aged Talmudic-scholar senior Rabbi Marshak. Danny could care less, though his troubled father Larry has desperately sought to speak to Marshak about the meaning of the series of calamities that have befallen him. He wants Marshak to explain what Hashem (God) is trying to tell him, but Marshak has no time to see him.

Danny sits down, and Marshak pulls out the transistor radio one of the Hebrew school teachers had confiscated from Danny in one of the opening scenes:

MARSHAK:
When the truth is found. To be lies. And all the hope. Within you dies...
Then what?
Grace Slick. Marty Balin. Paul Kanta. Jorma ...something. These are the membas of the Airplane. Interesting. Here.
[He gives Danny back the radio]
Be a good boy.

Throughout the movie, as Larry suffers one indignity after another, he protests again and again, "I haven't done anything wrong!" And he hasn't, But he hasn't done anything right either. He's a physics professor, but his brother Arthur is deep into bizarre mysticism. The film suggests both the scientist and the woo-ist have chosen the wrong path, trying too hard to plumb all the answers in a universe that refuses to explain itself or give up all its mysteries. 'The parable of the goy's teeth' is actually the film's 'message', (though presented as a joke, as the Coen's are wont to do with 'the point'): peace and happiness depend on giving up the quest for answers at some point, and just caring for other people, being a mensch.

The truth – whatever you think it is – will ALWAYS turn out to be some form of lie.

Then what?

Be good.

I'm off for a cuppa with old friends. All sinners. All who have been good to me. Le chaim, y'all.

To Old Rockin’ Dave #121:

“Obviously the Church was heavily invested in geocentrism…”

Really?
Why?
What Scripture verses and what Catholic dogma necessitated geocentrism?
..........
“Now, SN, you may read biblical verses any way you choose, which is what you and everyone else will do anyway, but however you read them has nothing to do with how the Church read them. Besides, the Church had adopted the geocentric cosmology of Ptolemy as doctrine.”

No.
Unlike with Protestants, if I read/interpret the Scriptures in a way the Church condemns, then I change my read/interpretation so that it is not in conflict with the Church, the body which formed the Scriptures.

But again, where did the Church adopt the geocentric cosmology of Ptolemy as *doctrine*?

I asked a question earlier and no one here has answered:

Is it also true that Galileo was proposing the false idea that the sun was the center of the universe, not just the center of our solar system?

“The truth – whatever you think it is – will ALWAYS turn out to be some form of lie.
Then what?
Be good.”

What a bunch of new age garbage.
Go smoke another "cuppa" joints, and maybe that mindless garbage will smell better.

I asked a question earlier and no one here has answered

@SN:

I asked a question earlier and no one here has answered

Maybe because said question, namely...

Is it also true that Galileo was proposing the false idea that the sun was the center of the universe, not just the center of our solar system?

...is totally irrelevant to the discussion.

SN, for detailed evidence of the Church's position of heliocentrism, there is quite a lot of well-sourced material here, ironically on a site devoted to geocentrism: http://veritas-catholic.blogspot.com/2005/08/geocentrism-101-part-iii-s…
Ptolemaic cosmology as dogma:
http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr161/lect/retrograde/aristotle.html
Now go forth and read and learn, and remember, you could have found this out as easily as I did.

I think it is inaccurate to see the Church wanting to defend the geocentric cosmology by reference to the Bible. Actually, the authority of the Church was based on "knowledge" and "knowledge" was aristotelian philosophy at this time. And the power of the Catholic Church was threatened by a much more serious issue than earth revolving around the sun, it was bread being changed in the body of Christ. Transubstantiation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transubstantiation was supported by aristotelian philosophy and "heretics" did not believe in it.
So, the position of the Church was close to what we see now in contemporary issues involving knowledge and power, and not to that of backward people believing in creation.

To Julian Frost #127:

Me: “Is it also true that Galileo was proposing the false idea that the sun was the center of the universe, not just the center of our solar system?”

You: “… said question …is totally irrelevant to the discussion.”

I don’t see how it’s “totally irrelevant” to the discussion that the theory proposed by Galileo was not only unprovable at the time, but was in fact false.

I asked a question earlier and no one here has answered

I asked a question earlier and no one here has answered

^ Rats, should have been two blockquotes. Selah.

The truth – whatever you think it is – will ALWAYS turn out to be some form of lie.

Everything you've ever been taught is WRONG.

I don’t see how it’s “totally irrelevant” to the discussion that the theory proposed by Galileo was not only unprovable without resorting to scientific instruments and complex math at the time, but was in fact false. better at explaining the observations and for making predictions.

Fix'd.

Unlike with Protestants, if I read/interpret the Scriptures in a way the Church condemns, then I change my read/interpretation so that it is not in conflict with the Church, the body which formed the Scriptures.

So how do you reconcile this with your stance on evolution, which, i believe, directly contradicts the Catholic Church's acceptance of evolution?

To TBruce #135:

Me: “Unlike with Protestants, if I read/interpret the Scriptures in a way the Church condemns, then I change my read/interpretation so that it is not in conflict with the Church, the body which formed the Scriptures.”

You: “So how do you reconcile this with your stance on evolution, which, i believe, directly contradicts the Catholic Church’s acceptance of evolution?”

No need to “reconcile” anything, as my stance is NOW, and has always been, acceptable by the Church. In fact, for over 90% of the Church’s existence, my stance was virtually unanimously held by the Church and its Fathers.

I think “acceptance” (i.e. of evolution) is too strong a word as far as the Church is concerned. The Church has NOT said evolution is true, and it has NOT said it is false.

Julian Frost (117),

You continue to promote the logical fallacy that whether Galileo was a jerk is relevant in science.

You add to this with -

A reasonable person would realise you’re replacing arguments with logical fallacies.
With regards to what I said about the evidence at the time favouring geocentrism:
http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2010/09/13/geocentrism-was-gali…
In fact, by even the late 1500s, 50 years after Copernicus, this geocentric explanation was far-and-away the most superior way to predict what the positions of the planets would be.

You make it seem as if the author stopped there. Do you also use the Darwin quote about the impossibility of an eye developing, but omit what he wrote after that?

Here is the rest of what the author you cited wrote -

So which was better? Was Galileo, the most passionate of all the heliocentric proponents, justified in his adamant rejection of geocentrism?

Up until the early 1600s, I would have said “no.” But right around 1609, something remarkable happened that scientifically settled the issue.

He explains the way the telescope changed everything and how after 1609 the evidence was clear. Galileo's trial was decades later.

The Church didn't admit its error until 1992.

Here is the final paragraph -

But the idea that “Galileo was wrong” is now 401 years out of date, and very, very easy to disprove. The geocentric model has yet to come up with an explanation for the apparent size of Venus in its different phases, and the scientific conclusion is that’s because it’s wrong. But perhaps someone out there knows better… any ideas?

But it is easy to excuse threatening to kill a scientist because he was a jerk.

Recant or we will burn you alive.

That's horrible.

The guy we are threatening is a jerk.

Oh. That's completely ethical and exactly what we expect from people who brag about being moral paragons.

A model that puts the Sun at the center of the entire universe with the Earth in orbit around it is less false then one where the Sun orbits the Earth.

The truth – whatever you think it is – will ALWAYS turn out to be some form of lie.

I could go on about nihilism but what's the point.

OT: Does anyone know why scanners (at multiple arprts) flag my right ankle for a pat down when it's my left ankle that contains the plates, screws and tightrope?

139 NaT, OT

Don't know, but some guesses.

Perhaps it's "the other left." If the imagery is taken from the back and screener reads the image as facing front...

Or do ankle monitors usually end up on the right leg?

Or perhaps the screeners, if they face you, routinely work from their left to their right.

"No need to “reconcile” anything, as my stance is NOW, and has always been, acceptable by the Church. In fact, for over 90% of the Church’s existence, my stance was virtually unanimously held by the Church and its Fathers."
So if for over 90% of the Church's existence I was responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus, then it's acceptable to blame me for that today?

O. Applesauce,

Thanks for the reply. I've looked at the monitor over my shoulder and there are front and back depictions. It's definitely the right ankle colored in.

The agents always start with the right ankle and then pat the left as well. Until today. They only touched the right ankle. Afterwards when I stated "the plate is in the left ankle." the agent said something entirely unheplful that it only scans the surface.

Makes me wonder what I'm carrying around on the skin of my right ankle...but not really.

Daniel Corcos: Go to the links I posted above. You will see that Ptolemaic cosmology was dogma and that various Church authorities, including Popes in Papal Bulls, cited the inerrancy of the cosmological implications of various biblical verses.
However they felt about bread becoming slices of godmeat is entirely irrelevant to their flatly stated reactions to Galileo's new model of the Universe as heretical. Allowing anything that challenged inerrancy by implication was out of the question.

Rogue Medic:

You continue to promote the logical fallacy that whether Galileo was a jerk is relevant in science.

Stop lying and stop strawmanning. I never said that that was relevant. My point was and remains:
To cast the events as “church sticking to a ridiculous viewpoint and shutting up Galileo” is a monumental and grotesque oversimplification of what actually happened.

You make it seem as if the author stopped there.

Once again, no. My point is, it wasn't that cut and dried even then.

But it is easy to excuse threatening to kill a scientist because he was a jerk.

Do you make straw men for a living? You're actually quite good at it.
One other thing: I looked at what Wikipedia said. The second paragraph reads:

Galileo's championing of heliocentrism and Copernicanism was controversial within his lifetime, when most subscribed to either geocentrism or the Tychonic system. He met with opposition from astronomers, who doubted heliocentrism due to the absence of an observed stellar parallax.

So even other astronomers in Galileo's day had doubts about heliocentrism.
My point was and is, life is seldom as simple as the narrative we are told, and this is one such instance.

Gaaah! I hope my blockquote fail hasn't rendered what I wrote unreadable.

@See Noevo:

From Wikipedia:

The Catholic Church holds no official position on the theory of creation or evolution, leaving the specifics of either theistic evolution or literal creationism to the individual within certain parameters established by the Church. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, any believer may accept either literal or special creation within the period of an actual six day, twenty-four hour period, or they may accept the belief that the earth evolved over time under the guidance of God

Well, that's interesting. I was wrong. Both Pope John Paul II and Pope Francis endorsed the theory of evolution, but the church's official stance is that acceptance of evolution is up to the individual, leaving the 6 day creation option open if one wishes.

Individual choice, what a concept! Maybe they should apply that to the contraception issue.

To cast the events as “church sticking to a ridiculous viewpoint and shutting up Galileo” is a monumental and grotesque oversimplification of what actually happened.

The original point, IIRC, was Gould's idea that science and religion comprise non-overlapping magisteria, and the failure of this idea to convince the leaders of religions, who have often insisted that science is very much part of their jurisdiction (while having the power to enforce their insistence).

From that perspective, it doesn't really matter whether Galileo was accused and convicted of heresy because of a genuine inquisitorial belief that his ideas about astronomy emperilled the souls of the masses by clashing with theology, or because he stepped on the toes of various thin-skinned authoritarians, who ginned up the theological show-trial as a way of taking him down.

Either way, the church claimed the right to stop scientists observing the objective world and making hypotheses from their observations. Indicating that Gould was a bit of a numpty for proposing that science and religion do not interfere.

I was just reading this article by Stephen Jay Gould about non-overlapping magisteria (as mentioned by M.O'B. and HDB above), which includes some musings on the RCC's views on evolution. More recent Popes (since Pius XII aka "the Nazi Pope") seem to believe in evolution, though IIRC papal opinion is not church policy/dogma. Pope Francis has said, "there are so many scientific proofs in favour of evolution which appears to be a reality we can see and which enriches our knowledge of life and being as such", though he points out we are still in the dark about the origins of life, there are some plausible hypotheses around (much more plausible than supernatural explanations.)

BTW, I too disagree with Gould on non-overlapping magisteria (NOMA as he calls them). I think there are many areas where religion and science's realms overlap: miracles and intercessionary prayer spring to mind. For NOMA to work, God would no longer intervene in physical reality either directly (miracles) or by providing information (visions, "God spoke to me"), meaning there is little point in praying, other than for a better time in the afterlife I suppose, but prayer seems to me to be a fairly constant characteristic of religion. A religion that offers nothing but spiritual succor and promises for an uncertain afterlife seems somewhat unappealing to me.

Julian Frost,

Stop lying and stop strawmanning. I never said that that was relevant. My point was and remains:
To cast the events as “church sticking to a ridiculous viewpoint and shutting up Galileo” is a monumental and grotesque oversimplification of what actually happened.

You put quotation marks in there, as if you are quoting me, but I did not write that.

If being a jerk was not relevant, why did you mention it?

Another problem was that even though Galileo was ultimately correct, he was a jerk about it.

So what?

Science is not supposed to make people feel good.

Science is supposed to help us learn the truth.

You make it seem as if the author stopped there.

Once again, no. My point is, it wasn’t that cut and dried even then.

The author of the article you cited disagrees with that conclusion in the article you cited.

Did you just read enough to find a quote you could use and then stop reading?

Did you hope that I would not read the article you cited?

Did you hope that I would not understand what the author wrote?

Did you understand what the author wrote?

You tried to support your position with an article that explicitly contradicts your position.

So even other astronomers in Galileo’s day had doubts about heliocentrism.

Even today, there are biologists who have doubts about evolution, but they are not taken seriously outside of religious circles.

Were those other astronomers attempting to lock Galileo up, or even merely advocating locking Galileo up?

A bunch of paragons of morality locked Galileo up, because . . . .

Rogue Medic:

You put quotation marks in there, as if you are quoting me, but I did not write that.

I was not quoting you, I was speaking generally. I was taught that story in history, and I was not the only one. I've since learnt that it was not that simple.

If being a jerk was not relevant, why did you mention it?

I didn't say it wasn't relevant. I never claimed the church was right to respond the way it did.
I've learnt from work experience that antagonising people, even when I'm right, is a good way to be ignored, and get grief.

Even today, there are biologists who have doubts about evolution, but they are not taken seriously outside of religious circles.

Today, there is overwhelming evidence of evolution. Back then, the evidence for heliocentrism wasn't overwhelming.
To repeat what I quoted from Wikipedia:

[Galileo] met with opposition from astronomers, who doubted heliocentrism due to the absence of an observed stellar parallax.

So in Galileo's day, there were "astronomers who doubted heliocentrism due to the absence of an observed stellar parallax." That says that back then, the evidence wasn't as overwhelming as it later became.
Stories, particularly ones where truths, half truths and inaccuracies merge, can be very dangerous. And the story of Galileo as I learnt it was a myth.

Replace the last two words in my comment with "one such story".

Either way, the church claimed the right to stop scientists observing the objective world and making hypotheses from their observations. Indicating that Gould was a bit of a numpty for proposing that science and religion do not interfere.

I find I must disagree.

Look at Lysenkoism in Stalin's Soviet Union. The Soviet system was of course officially opposed to religion, but the system under Stalin nevertheless had its doctrines which you could not question without reprisal. It had everything to do with the fact that it was a powerful system that could exert pressure to coerce allegiance to its dogma, and nothing to do with whether the dogma were religious, anti-religious, or a-religious in origin.

That's why people keep alluding to the fact that Galileo 'was a jerk'. Does his jerkishness mean he deserved his treatment from the Church? Of course not. But he was basically acting the way you would if you wanted to provoke a powerful institution into acting against you. Again, compare it to Lysenkoism: You might of course get in plenty of trouble just by saying "With all due respect to the learned Professor Lysenko, none of the experimental evidence matches his claims", but if instead you phrased it as "Josef Steelbrain: Derp, derp! Lysenko's the stuff for me, even if it can't show any results whatsoever!" then you shouldn't really be surprised at your abrupt all-expenses-paid trip to Siberia. (I should be able to walk into a dive bar in Southie and start trash-talking the Red Sox and expect that no one will start violence against me. But if it happens, it will be at least partially due to my poor judgment - not to mention the fact that I just had to go trash-talking.)

In other words, the conclusion that "Here's an example of a big institution with a great deal of worldly power and authority which reacted with a show of force when that authority was publicly challenged in a personally offensive manner - and the challenge happened to be over a point of religious doctrine, therefore science and religion do interfere!" appears to me to be missing the actual dynamics.

Does his jerkishness mean he deserved his treatment from the Church? Of course not. But he was basically acting the way you would if you wanted to provoke a powerful institution into acting against you.

That was the way that Galileo consistently demonstrated that he was right.

He challenged the authorities and then demonstrated that they were wrong.

As I wrote above - we need more jerks.

– and the challenge happened to be over a point of religious doctrine, therefore science and religion do interfere!” appears to me to be missing the actual dynamics.

The irony is that the religious institution has adopted but the science of Galileo and the religious interpretation of Galileo.

The reason Noma is silly is that science includes philosophy. We use scientific evidence to draw conclusions about the ways the world works. That is philosophy.

This includes the evolution of morality, which has become a very interesting field.

Ideologies, such as religion, use claims of special access to morality and truth to claim that they are better at it than others, but there is no consistent moral doctrine even among sincere members of the same religion.

The only thing that Christians agree on is that there was something special about Jesus. They do not even agree on what was special.

Sincere Christians take opposite sides on capital punishment, euthanasia, pain management, abortion, contraception, fetal research, corporal punishment, marriage equality, women as ministers/priests,bishops/deacons, the treatment of members of other races, . . . .

If there is no moral common ground, it is only coincidence when the religious agree on what is moral.

Monkeys throwing darts are also superior to the experts in picking stocks, but you will get an argument from many human stock pickers.

Why should we give the religious credit they clearly do not deserve?

the conclusion that “Here’s an example of a big institution with a great deal of worldly power and authority which reacted with a show of force when that authority was publicly challenged in a personally offensive manner – and the challenge happened to be over a point of religious doctrine, therefore science and religion do interfere!” appears to me to be missing the actual dynamics.

I can see the appeal of drawing a line between "genuine religious response to scientific theory" and "thin-skinned tyrants using religion as a pretext to persecute challengers and maintain power"... but it seems to be a True Scotsman kind of argument.

the conclusion that “Here’s an example of a big institution with a great deal of worldly power and authority which reacted with a show of force when that authority was publicly challenged in a personally offensive manner – and the challenge happened to be over a point of religious doctrine, therefore science and religion do interfere!” appears to me to be missing the actual dynamics.

I can see the appeal of drawing a line between “genuine religious response to scientific theory” and “thin-skinned tyrants using religion as a pretext to persecute challengers and maintain power”… but it seems to be a True Scotsman kind of argument.

Well, I certainly agree with you that it's not the most clear-cut issue in the world. I may well be wrong on this. But it seems to me that when we look at the historical mistakes that we want to keep ourselves from repeating, and ask "What were the actual causes of this? Was religion necessary and sufficient, or anywhere near so? Would things have really worked out much better if all the same power dynamics were in place, but the specific obsessions of those who acted out their obsessions were non-religious?" the answer is quite surprisingly "Religion is the culprit less often than you think; it often acts as a catalyst perhaps more often than more falsifiable points, but very often, it's merely the most visible identifier of clashing sides, not the actual source of the conflict." Again, you may disagree, and you may be right to disagree; we may never know for sure, but I know how the balance of the evidence looks to me.

FELDSPAR IS BULLYING ME!!!

I don't want in any way to bully herr doktor, but I would agree with Anteus. For me, this story has much to do with totalitarianism, and the issue was Church infallibility. At that time, Church had to defend against those questioning Church and Aristotle infallibility, and the main issue was transubstantiation.

Ok Rogue Medic, I get it.
You were trolling me. Congratulations, you won.

Julian Frost,

I was not trolling you at all.

The true jerks were the Catholic Church.

Threatening torture and execution is no way to conduct any kind of discussion, but it is very Catholic.

To Rogue Medic #159:

“Threatening torture and execution is no way to conduct any kind of discussion, but it is very Catholic.”

It’s very Catholic? I didn’t realize that.

How many were tortured and executed under Pope Francis, or under his recent predecessors Benedict XVI and John Paul II?
What’s the Church's death toll up to in the last 500 years?

“Threatening torture and execution is no way to conduct any kind of discussion, but it is very Catholic.”

It’s very Catholic? I didn’t realize that.

How many were tortured and executed under Pope Francis, or under his recent predecessors Benedict XVI and John Paul II?
What’s the Church’s death toll up to in the last 500 years?

Clearly, I did not state that torture and execution are very Catholic, only that threatening is very Catholic.

The last several hundred years may be only a temporary break with tradition.

The Catholic motto appears to be We don't do that any more.

It is good that Catholics are capable of some moral progress, but there is still opposition to the use of condoms to prevent the transmission of AIDS. Catholics claim to be interested in protecting life, but this is one way that demonstrates that ideology is more important than saving lives.

The same is true of contraception to prevent abortion. How many abortions would be prevented if the opposition to contraception were removed?

Then there is the threat of the torture of eternal hell that is the persuader for so many. That is still very Catholic, isn't it?

So what if it isn't real? Reality is not Catholic.

"What’s the Church’s death toll up to in the last 500 years?" Depends on how you want to count it. Until the later 19th Century, the Pope was a secular prince ruling the Papal States. Through them, the church was involved in a substantial number of wars from about the 14th Century to the 19th. I don't have any casualty figures, but I am confident the totals are somewhat more than zero. The Swiss Guard weren't always a squad of police and a platoon of anachronisms armed with cabbage cutters; they were once a substantial and lethal fighting force.
If you're only thinking of the Spanish Inquisition and the like, remember that it was only officially ended in 1931; although I'm sure it wasn't putting people to death that late, I know the Holy Office was doing it in some places up to as late as the early 19th Century. The Papal States surely put people to death for both civil and religious crimes at rates comparable to the rest of Europe.
Then there are the crimes of others carried out with either Vatican silence or Vatican complicity. Many in the Spanish colonial administrations actively supported the often-fatal enslavement of native peoples, and the executions for heresy, blasphemy, or revolt against church authority of the same. peoples. Churchmen took active roles in the crimes of the Ustaše in Croatia, even the command of one of the concentration camps where Jews, Serbs, and Roma were murdered by the Croat collaborationist state, and with the full knowledge and silence of the Pope. That same Pope failed to speak out against the Holocaust, taking part in only small and nearly meaningless rescue efforts. Just before the Allied liberation of Rome, he failed to speak out and possibly stop the Adreatine caves massacre, even when assured he could do so safely by ranking officials of the Nazi administration of Rome. After the war he acquiesced to Eva Peron's request to aid Nazi war criminals to escape to Argentina; Jews who were aided by Catholic orders to be smuggled into Mandatory Palestine were sometimes housed on different floors of the same monasteries those Nazis were sheltered in.
No one can even begin to count the number of women who have died from one pregnancy too many, botched illegal abortions, violence at the hands of men they couldn't divorce, vicious abuse in the convent laundries and orphanages of Ireland, and doubtless numerous other causes that can directly or indirectly be laid at the Holy Door, the so-called gate of justice.
So let me ask you, "What's the Church's death toll up to in the last 500 years?"

See Noevo,
Any comment about the recent Planned Parenthood shooting? Do you think it's possible the man responsible might have been encouraged in his actions by people who write things like this?

PP exterminates more human lives than anyone on the planet.

I'm sure you don't condone these murders but I'm curious to know how (or if) you justify spouting the rhetoric (such as "no more baby parts") that leads to this kind of tragedy.

To Old Rockin’ Dave #162:

“… although I’m sure it wasn’t putting people to death that late, I know the Holy Office was doing it in some places up to as late as the early 19th Century.”

With that kind of certainty, you may have a Pulitzer Prize coming your way. Do tell us more.

“So let me ask you, “What’s the Church’s death toll up to in the last 500 years?””

Approximately zero.

To Krebiozen #163:

“Any comment about the recent Planned Parenthood shooting?”

I think the shooter should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

I also think that, year-to-date in the abortion wars,
killings by pro-lifers = about 3,
killings by pro-aborts = about 1,000,000.

TOTALLY off-topic

IIRC, when Satan showed up to wrestle over theological issues with Martin Luther he (Satan) would often depart, leaving only a turd behind.

Here on RI, SN shows up, comments and departs, leaving only a coprolite.

Coincidence?? I think not!!

What’s the Church’s death toll up to in the last 500 years?

Are you counting deaths by suicide of those who underwent sexual and other abuse in childhood by priests and in Catholic residential schools?

“So let me ask you, “What’s the Church’s death toll up to in the last 500 years?””

Approximately zero.

An inadvertent work of art. I take it the unstated circumscription is "burned alive for heresy in Rome" or some such.

So, according to See Noevo the creep, approximately zero Catholics took part in either World War, fought for/against Napoleon, in the War of Independence or in any of the wars during the last 500 years....

...it's a peculiar world it lives in.

gaist,

It isn't reasonable to hold an entire church responsible for the actions of its members if those actions weren't based on the teachings of that church, in the name of that church, or with the approval of the leadership of that church.

If individuals went to wars without invoking a church's authority, that can't be laid at the church's doorstep.

A better case could be made for deaths in missionary endeavors, including those oh the Spanish conquistadors. Actions by other Catholic countries such as Austria might well qualify.

SN,

I also think that, year-to-date in the abortion wars,
killings by pro-lifers = about 3,
killings by pro-aborts = about 1,000,000.

Can't you see that rhetoric - "wars", "killings" and equating an aborted fetus's life with that of a mother of two young children or a police officer - is deliberately designed to evoke the emotions that drive people into the kind of horrific actions we saw recently? Personally I think those who encourage people to commit murders share some moral culpability for those murders. In the past there has been at least one successful prosecution for encouraging the murders of abortion clinic workers, so I would tread carefully if I were you.

How would you feel if you found out the shooter had been following your comments on-line and had committed these murders as a result? I have trouble understanding your mind-set and I'm curious. Like creationism, such rabid opposition to abortion is utterly alien to me. I had never heard of PP or their harvesting of fetal tissue (which seems eminently moral and sensible to me) until you mentioned them here, so when I saw a UK news report of murders at a PP clinic with the shooter stating, "no more baby parts", I immediately thought of you and wondered how you felt about this horrific event.

Badly worded on my part, didn't mean a blanket statement of everyone self-identifying as Catholic...

..but with Arch-Bishops and Catholic priests encouraging conscription and the formation of "Catholic brigades", holding sermons calling a conflict the Just War, and the taking up of arms a duty, for example, even if done without direct orders from the Pope, do lay some responsibility on the Church.

Then there are the wars (mainly against Ottomans) where the Papal state was actively involved in, and fought by mainly Catholic Italian states like Venice with Papal blessing. Papal states (and Catholic volunteer armies joining them) also fought against Garibaldi's troops, which are, in my book and given the wording of See Noevo's question, directly attributable to The Church. Just a few examples, there are others too.

Having had a recent discussion with my son about abortion, this topic strikes home.

Although I lean towards the opinion that people often use religion as a convenient excuse for what they want to do anyway, the Catholic Church because of its authoritarian structure certainly has its share of responsibility for war and suffering.

First to jump to my mind was the 30 Years War which, although it involved a fair amount of regional and national politics, was first and formost about the Church trying to maintain and enforce its authority in the face of the spreading Protestant reformation.

Wikipedia cites a number of 8 million causualties, both military and civilian.

I remember reading a military historical analysis some years ago that noted that some regions still (centuries later) hadn't completely recovered from the effects.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Years%27_War

@See Noevo:

Are you also counting the millions who contracted and died of HIV infection thanks to the Church's rabid opposition to distribution of condoms?

Let's not forget the toll of death and misery from unsafe abortions.

@ Krebiozen

How would you feel if you found out the shooter had been following your comments on-line and had committed these murders as a result?

If SN is like any of these brave twittering twits on Twitter, he would feel very happy.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2015/11/28/pro-lifers-take…

But SN is not like this. After all, he chastised me for daring to think of killing one (dying) human being in order to save the life of another one. So of course he is going to be aghast at the idea he may be morally responsible for murders.

Since SN doesn't have a practical solution for reducing the number of abortions, he is actually as much responsible for his million dead babies as about anyone else.

Renate @118

I'd have gone with this one - (Tim Minchin's 'Pope Song')

NOT SAFE FOR WORK OR SMALL CHILDREN
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHRDfut2Vx0
NOT SAFE FOR WORK OR SMALL CHILDREN

Maybe that's why The Church is against abortion and contraception - they need a steady supply of kids.

Helianthus,
Those comments are frightening. What is wrong with those people? I can understand people being against abortion, but supporting the murder of those offering abortion services makes no sense to me. As far as I am concerned, and the US Justice Department shares my view, this is terrorism, just as much as the Paris attacks were, and I hope those who have expressed those opinions are being checked out.

BTW, the victims were two civilians and one police officer, not vice versa as I stated above.

Look for sn to quickly adopt the position Ted Cruz has staked out.

http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2015/11/29/3726311/ted-cruz-planned-paren…

Helianthus,

You suggest that SN is accurate in stating that the Catholic Church is opposed to abortion.

That is just a ruse.

The Catholic Church's adamant opposition to contraception guarantees large numbers of abortions.

As with any ideological organization, this manufactured controversy brings in donations.

The Catholic Church could easily have a dramatic effect on the number of abortions, but they don't want to.

Catholic morality - claim to be in favor of life, but oppose things that would cut abortion, cut AIDS transmission, and research that would improve the lives of infants and children.

Science has dramatically improved the lives of infants and children.

The Catholic Church has changed Extreme Unction to the Sacrament of the Sick, but that is the extent of their progress in treating infant mortality.

Meaningful progress does not come from religion.

Krebiozen, # 178
I think the right naming should be "stochastic terrorism".
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/1/10/934890/-

As for some previous comment, Holy Roman Catholic Church had a real world state until 1871. Of course, death penalties were sentenced, especially for what now would be believed political reasons.
https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angelo_Targhini_e_Leonida_Montanari
By the way, it was only after 1801 that death penalties in Holy See were made with the modern humanitarian tool brought in Italy by Frenchs, the guillotine. Before that date, people were executed with "mazzola e squarta" (that is, club and rip).

Selective Blindness AKA See Noevo:
Let's examine your response to me.
Church killings in war or under color of law as a secular power - not addressed.
Church culpability and complicity in colonial, especially Spanish and Portuguese, crimes - not addressed.
Church culpability and complicity in, and willful ignorance of, the Holocaust and related crimes by Croatian, Ukrainian, and Romanian Catholics including clergy - not addressed.
Church failure to take an easy and safe step to halt an atrocity on its own doorstep - not addressed.
Church abetting escape of Nazi war criminals who went on to aid murderous regimes - not addressed.
Church-committed and/or sanctioned abuses leading to death of minors supposed to be in their care (Magdalen laundries et. al.) - not addressed.
Church policy leading to unnecessary and avoidable deaths, principally of women - not addressed.
Factual statement regarding murders by the Holy Inquisition - addressed, incorrectly dismissed, and not refuted, viz. this quote from the Wikipedia article on the Inquisition: "The last execution of the Inquisition was in Spain in 1826. This was the execution by garroting of the school teacher Cayetano Ripoll for purportedly teaching Deism in his school."
I don't want a Pulitzer; you can go and pull it, sir.

To Krebiozen #171, and other Catholic Church bashers here:

Regarding “How would you feel if you found out the shooter had been following your comments on-line and had committed these murders as a result?”

I ask
How would you feel if you found out a future shooter in a Catholic Church or an assassin of a pope had been following your comments on-line and had committed these murders as a result?

Somebody should start a pool on S.N.'s favorite pope. My money's on Sixtus V.

See Noinfo:
As our host has so well quoted, "A statement of fact can not be insolent." Call a recital of facts Catholic Church bashing if you will, but historical facts, like the theory of evolution, don't go away just because you don't like them. You still have not addressed the points I raised, not even to acknowledge your blatant error regarding the one you chose to respond to. You probably thought it was easy pickings because you hadn't heard of it. Or are you might be taking a leaf from the papacy and declaring yourself infallible? By the way, you missed my punctuation error. At least you would have had firmer ground to stand on in replying to me.
If you are so bothered by what you call Catholic Church bashing, convert to something else and I will be happy to bash that instead. Better yet, learn to distinguish between Catholic Church bashing and See Noinfo bashing.

How would you feel if you found out a future shooter in a Catholic Church or an assassin of a pope had been following your comments on-line and had committed these murders as a result?

I would feel very bad.
That's why I don't go around throwing terms like “wars” and “killings”.

Re: Catholic-bashing
I would like to point out a little fact:
- people working in abortion clinics are doing so respecting the local laws they have accepted to follow when signing in on the job. When they are suspected they don't, plenty of people are willing to drag them to a judicial hearing, as evidenced recently.
- Catholic high priests have been found again and again not following their own rules. Apparently, pedophilia is OK if it's a priest doing it. That scandal resulted in a UN report a few years back.
So maybe some verbal Catholic-bashing is warranted.

See Noevo,

I ask
How would you feel if you found out a future shooter in a Catholic Church or an assassin of a pope had been following your comments on-line and had committed these murders as a result?

I don't believe any of my comments have been designed to elicit an emotional reaction that would lead to violence, so I don't see how anyone could commit a violent act as a result of reading my comments. I have tried to remain objective in my interactions with you, using scientific language. I don't believe any of my comments could be seen as remotely inciting violence against Catholics.

You, however, use rhetoric that is clearly designed to affect people emotionally, to incite disgust, anger and even violence. You talk of killing millions of babies, when you know very well that a fetus is not a baby and no babies have been killed. You have repeatedly linked to websites that write of how babies are torn apart alive while cruel technicians cackle evilly, when you know that this is dishonest (to put it politely).

If I were you, and had posted large amounts of dishonest inflammatory material accusing PP of being baby murderers, I would feel some moral culpability for my actions given recent events. Clearly your moral compass is different to mine.

It's cute how pissy See Noevo the creep got when it didn't get the answer it wanted.

Who here apart from you, See, has been using violent imagery and words in their posts? I'd imagine the killer 'inspired' by Krebiozen would say something like "In the spirit of reasoned moderation and patient and polite discussion I gunned down these..." Not a very likely scenario. Even I spent many a post pointing out how you and your pal APV or whatever were not representative of the Catholic Church or it's members.

Whereas... "In the spirit of Christ I gunned down these baby-killing murderers..." sounds a tad more realistic. Which incidentally brings me to point of how you failed to answer the question while repeating it yourself. Quid pro quo, or are you too cowardly?

@ squirrelelite

Although I lean towards the opinion that people often use religion as a convenient excuse for what they want to do anyway,

Oh, I would totally agree. At the society's level, I see religion more like a social tool toward a mean rather than the source of all evils.
Like any tool, it could be used for good and for bad purpose.

Re: the 30-years war
A fine example indeed of religion being used for the pursuit of geo-political gain. Or vice-versa. When spiritual leaders become fully involved into secular matters, it's difficult to tell where religion ends and politics start.

I remember reading a military historical analysis some years ago that noted that some regions still (centuries later) hadn’t completely recovered from the effects.

One of my mom's hobby is peering through old documents and retracing the genealogy of her village's late aristocratic family, which was also Protestant, à la Fortunes de France.

As she was following the trails of the family's numerous expatriates (gosh did people travel a lot, even before we invented airplanes), she came across similar historical analyses: whole regions of today's Germany were so ravaged as to be literally a no-man's land. That was left of the local authorities granted land for free to any willing immigrant, just to have someone, anyone occupying that was until the war a nice settlement place.

That's why so many German people of today have French-sounding names (like the fictional German protagonist of Vercors' "Le Silence de la Mer"). They are the descendants of the French Calvinists who fled France during the religion wars.*

* religion wars, as in people killing each others in the name of their interpretation of god, with the most enraged Catholic priests promising full redemption of all past and future sins for killing a single heretic. There was a fair bit of collateral damage among non-combatants. Including babies.
And, why, it's about 400-year old. Right inside the time window of someone's query of a tally list.

To Krebiozen #187:

You write
“I don’t believe any of my comments have been designed to elicit an emotional reaction that would lead to violence, so I don’t see how anyone could commit a violent act as a result of reading my comments.”

Yet when TBruce wrote “Are you also counting the millions who contracted and died of HIV infection thanks to the Church’s rabid opposition to distribution of condoms?”

you immediately responded
“Let’s not forget the toll of death and misery from unsafe abortions.”

It seems as though you’re blaming the Church for the millions who contracted and died of HIV infection thanks to the Church’s rabid opposition to distribution of condoms as well as for the toll of death and misery from unsafe abortions.

And it also seems that such death-dealing accusations could most definitely elicit an emotional reaction, perhaps even violently emotional reactions.

Or don't you see that?

See Noevo,

Yet when TBruce wrote “Are you also counting the millions who contracted and died of HIV infection thanks to the Church’s rabid opposition to distribution of condoms?”
you immediately responded
“Let’s not forget the toll of death and misery from unsafe abortions.”

It is a fact that the RCC's prohibition of abortion has led to millions of women choosing unsafe abortions and many dying and suffering as a result. TBruce and I did not use any emotive language, we merely pointed out the facts. If you had stated that you objected to abortion on moral grounds except in exceptional circumstances and were concerned about how PP was harvesting fetal tissue I would have no problem.

It seems as though you’re blaming the Church for the millions who contracted and died of HIV infection thanks to the Church’s rabid opposition to distribution of condoms as well as for the toll of death and misery from unsafe abortions.

Yes, I do think the Church bears some moral culpability for the death and misery that unsafe abortions cause. I have stated to you (in another thread) that I think the RCC is well-intentioned but that it has inadvertently caused a huge amount of suffering. I have not been not been ranting that the RCC are child-molesting women murderers.

Conversely, your repeated condemnation of PP as baby killers carries, in my opinion, a strong implication that they should be punished. You shouldn't really be surprised that someone stepped up to the plate.

And it also seems that such death-dealing accusations could most definitely elicit an emotional reaction, perhaps even violently emotional reactions.

I think there is a very big difference between making factual statements using objective language, and dishonest rhetoric about cutting up babies while they are still alive. Perhaps you don't.

Or don’t you see that?

No, I don't see that. If the facts upset someone, I do not see that as my responsibility (unless I am responsible for those facts, of course). If I lie and use inflammatory language that is designed to upset people, and that does upset someone and they then do someone awful as a result, I believe I am partially culpable.

It seems as though you’re blaming the Church for the millions who contracted and died of HIV infection thanks to the Church’s rabid opposition to distribution of condoms as well as for the toll of death and misery from unsafe abortions.

Why...yes, we are!

And it also seems that such death-dealing accusations could most definitely elicit an emotional reaction, perhaps even violently emotional reactions.

No way! Well, I'd better just sit down and shut up, hadn't I?

BTW, I am aware of only one assassination attempt on a pope in the last 100 years. It had nothing to do with anger at the Church's policy on contraception or abortion. I am not aware of any violent attacks on Catholic churches resulting from their opposition to women's choice. Attacks, arson and murder directed at women's health providers, on the other hand...

To Krebiozen #191:

“It is a fact that the RCC’s prohibition of abortion has led to millions of women choosing unsafe abortions and many dying and suffering as a result.”

That’s not only not a fact, it’s ridiculous.
Those who have chosen abortion obviously cared more about abortion than they did about any prohibitions of the CC. And it wasn’t the CC that made abortion in the U.S. illegal prior to 1973, it was the government.

“If you had stated that you objected to abortion on moral grounds except in exceptional circumstances and were concerned about how PP was harvesting fetal tissue I would have no problem.”

As I think I have done here on these blogs for the most part. But when pressed as to WHY I object on moral grounds, I explain that abortion is the deliberate taking of an innocent human life. This is a FACTUAL statement of what abortion is. [Arbitrary and illogical quibbling about whether some human lives are not human beings aside.]
And this explanation, this factual statement, is considered by you to be inflammatory, I guess.

“If I lie and use inflammatory language that is designed to upset people, and that does upset someone and they then do someone awful as a result, I believe I am partially culpable.”

I don’t lie. But if my factual language and logical arguments in defense of innocent human lives upsets and inflames people like you, so be it.

"I don’t lie."

Wow. Which of the numerous statements that modern cosmology is completely wrong, evolution is false, the earth is only a few thousand years old, priests never abused children, and more, is factually correct? None of them - every statement you've ever made about science has been false.

I don’t lie.

If you believe that, you're even better at self deception than I thought humanly possible.

Back to Ben Carson for just a second...
I wonder if Ben should offer to examine Hillary’s brain.
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/hillary-clinton-blood-clot-life-threatenin…

Some people were pretty concerned about her head.
Like Huma Abedin: “She’s often confused.”
And hubby Bill: "…was a terrible concussion that required six months of very serious work to get over."

Although Ben was a pediatric neurosurgeon and Hillary’s not a kid, brains is brains. Should Ben check her out?
What a great “reach across the aisle” that would be!

August 16, 2012 may have been a dark day for Krebiozen, et al.
What their rhetoric hath wrought!
http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/15/us/dc-shooting/

Good old See Noinfo. When the going gets tough, the desperate change the subject.
Just a quick comment about your Clinton/Carson comment: I wouldn't trust the average neurosurgeon to do much in the way of neurology. If they can't do a procedure for it, they tend to forget how to diagnose or treat it. Which would make him the perfect person to examine your brain - info has leaked out of his brain, but never made it into yours.

It seems as though you’re blaming the Church for the millions who contracted and died of HIV infection thanks to the Church’s rabid opposition to distribution of condoms

The Catholic Church, as an institution, is not responsible in the secular sense, but it is definitively not helping by sticking to inefficient solutions, or standing by and doing nothing, or ignoring the wicked in their ranks. In this regard, yes, there is moral responsibility.
When the Catholic Church, as an institution, is hiding and abetting someone who has committed a crime, in most societies, civilized or otherwise, the act would be considered as complicity, and the accomplices would be held responsible for the crimes of the felon, past and future. Pure and simple.

Now, Catholics as individuals. Like anyone else, they come in all types and shapes.
In the 80's, a French archbishop had this to say regarding AIDS and condom use: "at the very least, don't add the sin of murder to the sin of flesh".
He was in essence saying that the full ABC campaign is saying in the US. It was a well-received message, because it was making sense and it was telling people to take responsibility for their acts.
Sadly, he was pretty much a lone voice among the clergy, French or otherwise. He always was bit of a maverick.
The previous pope made it crystal clear during an Africa tour that the Church line is that condoms are making things worse.

To Old Rockin' Dave:

“Good old See Noinfo. When the going gets tough, the desperate change the subject.”

I’m not about to argue with you over every perceived transgression of the Catholic Church over the last hundreds or thousands of years.

I would, however, consider addressing one, JUST ONE, of your points (e.g. from #182).

You pick. Throw your favorite flag.

See Noevo,

Regarding “How would you feel if you found out the shooter had been following your comments on-line and had committed these murders as a result?”

I ask
How would you feel if you found out a future shooter in a Catholic Church or an assassin of a pope had been following your comments on-line and had committed these murders as a result?

I would wonder why you see a connection, but the lack of understanding of cause and effect is probably why you are religious.

I have not advocated for any violence against anyone.

I have criticized the immorality of the Catholic Church.

There is only morality in murder in the Bible, but I criticize that.

If you treat the Bible as true, then you really should correct the popular bumper sticker - John 3:16.

For God so loved the world that he drowned everyone except for 8 people, but he made a rainbow to apologize for the worst crime ever documented. Your God planned the flood when most of the people to be killed had not even been born.

For God so loved the world, that he decided to show Abraham how real parents handle human sacrifice. After all, kids are just property to do with as you please. The trick is convincing Jr. to believe it's his idea.

Rogue Medic@201
How about:

For God so loves his faithful, that he let Satan kill Job's family to win an argument. Because why have cool toys if you can't show off to your friends?

See Noevo,

I explain that abortion is the deliberate taking of an innocent human life. This is a FACTUAL statement of what abortion is.

You've got to admire Catholics. They shamelessly contradict themselves. This is divine arrogance.

Innocent?

When did you guys (and this does all come from guys) repeal original sin?

Original sin wasn't invented until after the Gospels were written, so it is appropriate to state that all of the fetuses God drowned in the flood were innocent, but it is inconsistent to claim that fetuses are exempt from original sin, when that is one of the major selling points of Catholicism.

Or do Catholics claim that original sin is passed from mother to infant in the birth canal, the way herpes is transmitted? If that is the case, how do cesarean births transmit this essence of Catholicism?

The mental gymnastics of Catholic catechism.

Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.

capnkrunch,

How about:

For God so loves his faithful, that he let Satan kill Job’s family to win an argument. Because why have cool toys if you can’t show off to your friends?

They don't count, because women and children are just property.

That is one of the reasons you will not find any rules against abortion in the Bible.

That is unless you twist the meaning of cherry picked verses.

That is a good example - and the only case of Satan ever killing anyone. The supposed Big Bad of the Bible has much more respect for life than the Good Guy.

Literacy and a Bible are the antidotes to Christianity.

It’s worth noting that sn has repeatedly said pregnancy and birth are safe while abortion is dangerous in many ways. He’s also argued against increasing access to health care for all, calling it socialism and not needed.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/01/health/maternal-mortality-rate-u-s-increa…

Giving birth is one of the most dangerous things a woman will ever do and it's easily the most dangerous day of a baby's entire childhood. Anyone who denies or downplays this is either clueless or harbouring a foolish agenda.

capnkrunch: "For God so loves his faithful, that he let Satan kill Job’s family to win an argument. Because why have cool toys if you can’t show off to your friends?"

In a recent podcast, author/filmmaker Chris Matheson stated he thought the Book Job was actually satire.

To Delphine #206:

“Giving birth is one of the most dangerous things a woman will ever do and it’s easily the most dangerous day of a baby’s entire childhood. Anyone who denies or downplays this is either clueless or harbouring a foolish agenda.”

Giving birth – horror of horrors.
Perhaps giving birth should be outlawed.

You know what’s even more dangerous than child birth, and in fact lethal, over 99.9% of the time?

Hint: It's something that's legal now, but used to be be outlawed.

See Noevo,

Hint: It’s something that’s legal now, but used to be be outlawed.

It was only outlawed in part of the 19th and 20th centuries.

It isn't outlawed in the Bible - unless you twist the verses that you cherry pick, but that's the point of the vaguest book ever written. It means whatever you want it to mean.

Some sincere Christians oppose abortion, while other sincere Christians do not.

Christian morality is whatever you want it to be.

I will just leave this here, in regard to the recent Planned Parenthood shooting.

I stand with planned parenthood

To Rogue Medic #209:

“Christian morality is whatever you want it to be.”

Well, if you were to put quotation marks around that first word, I would definitely agree.

However, *Catholic* morality (i.e. Catholic Church definitive teaching on morality) is *not* whatever you want it to be.

Regarding #210, I will just leave this here:
Helianthus stands with such things as

“America is filled with terrorists”;
“Forget Syria. The most dangerous religious extremists are migrants from North and South Carolina.”

However, *Catholic* morality (i.e. Catholic Church definitive teaching on morality) is *not* whatever you want it to be.

sn, since you are one of the low-lifes who defended the thousands of priests who abused children, there is no need to put quotation marks around the word catholic: you interpreted catholic morality exactly the way you wanted to.

See Noevo,

“Christian morality is whatever you want it to be.”

Well, if you were to put quotation marks around that first word, I would definitely agree.

No quotation marks are necessary.

There is no ultimate source of Christian truth.

If one of the Christian Gods decides to materialize and give us objective rules for what Christianity is, I will have to revise that statement.

Until then, anyone can sincerely claim to be as Christian as anyone else and nobody can provide objective evidence that they are wrong.

The Ku Klux Klan and Pope Francis appear to be equally sincere Christians, even though they appear to disagree on many things and base those disagreements on the Bible.

If the Christian Gods were competent at communication, this would not be a problem, but the Christian Gods appear to be the worst communicators ever.

Why couldn't they come up with something that explained what they meant, rather than limiting themselves to the technology of the people who created the Gods?

It is almost as if the Gods aren't real and do not have any magical powers.

You know what’s even more dangerous than child birth, and in fact lethal, over 99.9% of the time?

Hint: It’s something that’s legal now, but used to be be outlawed.

I give up--I know it isn't abortion, since the mortality associated with medical abortions is 0.6 deaths per every 100,000 procedures (not 999 out of every thousand) but for the life of me I can't guess what it actually might be.

Care to give us another hint?.

That is one of the reasons you will not find any rules against abortion in the Bible.

Actually, there is a passage (Exodus 21:22-25) that addresses acting to cause a pregnant woman to miscarry (i.e., causing her to abort) and it is treated as a property crime, punishable by a fine rather than a murder punishable by blood (the whole eye for an eye thing)

And guess who gets to set the fine and pocket the money? her husband, of course. It's his property that has been damaged, after all.

@ See Noevo

Remind me again, in all the mass shootings and gun rampage there was in the US these past 2 months, how many were from evil muslims?
I will give you a hint: one less than in my much smaller country.

I stand by the article's content I linked.
Showing up at an healthcare facility and gunning down people is terrorism. In your case, Yankees, most of the time the culprits of mass shootings are white people of Christian culture.

Also, for the lurkers, please note that the article I linked to is presenting strong arguments and social studies that the ones actually reducing the rate of abortion are pro-choice people, with all their silly ideas about contraception and sex education.
Pro-life people are making things worse.
Seems SN is unable to face some hard truths. Nothing news. We already had a 2000+ thread on this topic.

To Rogue Medic #214:

“There is no ultimate source of Christian truth.”

Is that an infallible statement of yours?
................
“If one of the Christian Gods decides to materialize and give us objective rules for what Christianity is, I will have to revise that statement.”

Well, get busy revising, because it’s already happened.
..............
“If the Christian Gods were competent at communication, this would not be a problem, but the Christian Gods appear to be the worst communicators ever.”

Communication’s not the problem.
*Willful* deafness and *adamant* ignorance are.

Giving birth – horror of horrors.
Perhaps giving birth should be outlawed.

Perhaps we should give birth and the women who do it (along with the HCPs who guide them) the respect they're due. I could tell you all kinds of horror stories that happen to women and babies in LDCs that I have witnessed and that I continue to read about on a weekly basis, but I suspect that you likely already know that sh!t happens to poor women and babies on daily basis.

I nearly died giving birth, in a Western country with comparatively low rates of maternal mortality. I have no uterus now, because after giving birth to a perfectly healthy baby after a perfectly normal pregnancy, my uterus would not stop expelling blood. What I suspect you don't know is how sh!t can go south, in just a few heartbeats, often with major irreparable consequences.

Instead, you just make this about abortion. Your tunnel vision is exquisite.

Again, you make me profoundly ashamed to be Roman Catholic.

To Delphine 219:

“Again, you make me profoundly ashamed to be Roman Catholic.”

What would be shameful, and actually sinful, is if you present yourself as Roman Catholic but are also, say, “pro-choice” (i.e. pro-abortion/pro-abortion rights), pro-contraception, pro-“gay marriage.”

You are not my confessor or my priest, asshole.

JGC,

Actually, there is a passage (Exodus 21:22-25) that addresses acting to cause a pregnant woman to miscarry (i.e., causing her to abort) and it is treated as a property crime, punishable by a fine rather than a murder punishable by blood (the whole eye for an eye thing)

And guess who gets to set the fine and pocket the money? her husband, of course. It’s his property that has been damaged, after all.

Very true.

"When men strive together, and hurt a woman with child, so that there is miscarriage, and yet no harm follows, the one who hurt her shall be fined according as the woman's husband shall lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine. If any harm follows, then you shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe."

The harm is to the woman, who is also considered the man's property, but he is compensated differently for harm to her, because she is not a fetus.

See Noevo,

What would be shameful, and actually sinful, is if you present yourself as Roman Catholic but are also, say, “pro-choice” (i.e. pro-abortion/pro-abortion rights), pro-contraception, pro-“gay marriage.”

Being in favor of human rights is a sin for Catholics.

If you are right, then I guess there is very little morality in Catholicism.

Fortunately, Catholic morality keeps evolving.

A few centuries ago, they would have burned me alive for writing what I have written.

There is hope for even the lowest of the low (since I do not expect you to understand, that is a reference to the Catholics, SN).

See Noevo,

“There is no ultimate source of Christian truth.”

Is that an infallible statement of yours?

No.

If you read a little bit further, you will have an explanation.

“If one of the Christian Gods decides to materialize and give us objective rules for what Christianity is, I will have to revise that statement.”

Well, get busy revising, because it’s already happened.

Yet Christians continue to demonstrate the error of your assumptions.

“If the Christian Gods were competent at communication, this would not be a problem, but the Christian Gods appear to be the worst communicators ever.”

Communication’s not the problem.

True.

The imaginary friends and the belief in imaginary friends are the problems.

*Willful* deafness and *adamant* ignorance are.

I don't take confessions, but it is good that you are acknowledging your limitations.

Let me remind you, See, that you asked me once:
"Are you saying NO ONE apart from Jesus Christ has authority to say definitively what Christianity is, and even authority to decide what proper Christian behavior is?"
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2015/05/20/why-do-doctors-deny-evolut…

You won't acknowledge Jesus Christ as the ultimate authority. What does that make you?

Seems SN is unable to face some hard truths. Nothing news. We already had a 2000+ thread on this topic.

That sounds like an excellent reason to stop feeding him so that he can go back to being largely ignored in the Breitbump comments.

To Delphine #221:

Me: “What would be shameful, and actually sinful, is if you present yourself as Roman Catholic but are also, say, “pro-choice” (i.e. pro-abortion/pro-abortion rights), pro-contraception, pro-“gay marriage.”

You: “You are not my confessor or my priest, asshole.”

Ouch! That’s one more to add to your sin list when you DO see your priest confessor. I mean, in addition to the pro-abortion, pro-contraception, etc.

BTW, DO you participate in the sacrament of reconciliation (a.k.a. confession)?

To Rogue Medic #223:

“Fortunately, Catholic morality keeps evolving. A few centuries ago, they would have burned me alive for writing what I have written.”

Catholic morality evolves? Not really.
Heretics have always been condemned, with at least excommunication.
Any punishment *beyond* excommunication seems unique to a historical context and a prudential judgment regarding *state security.*
Consider that, even today, the governments of most countries have severe penalties, sometimes extending to capital punishment, for treason or for other actions against the state. Back in medieval Europe, I think most, if not all, the states were Christian states. That is, they were states *not* run by the Church but states which had Christianity as the state religion; states with a “Christ constitution”, if you will. Christian heresy was considered a *threat to the state and its social order.* Obviously, such threats to the state and social order would be considered very serious business. [Nevertheless, as I understand, the medieval states usually maintained secular courts where the majority of “inquisitions” were held. I also understand the sentences in the secular courts were usually more severe than in the ecclesiastical courts, to the extent that defendants often tried to have their hearings moved TO the ecclesiastical courts.]

Again, the Catholic morality hasn’t changed – the same sins then are the same sins now. However, the temporal punishment for the sin can be a matter of prudential judgment.
To take perhaps an extreme current day example: One priest may give you a penance of three Our Fathers, while another priest may give you, for the same confessed sins, a penance of a whole decade of the Rosary.

Catholicism made Europe. It’s why Europe isn’t an extension of the darkness of the Islamic Middle East. (At least for now.) It’s why Europe was the ground of the first universities and hospitals, and common law systems.

Europeans should thank God for the Catholic Church. They should, but they don’t any longer.

To Gray Falcon #225:

“Let me remind you, See, that you asked me once:
“Are you saying NO ONE apart from Jesus Christ has authority to say definitively what Christianity is, and even authority to decide what proper Christian behavior is?”
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2015/05/20/why-do-doctors-deny-evolut…

You won’t acknowledge Jesus Christ as the ultimate authority. What does that make you?”

Are you serious, Gray One?
I used to think you were joking, but given the many times you’ve posted this on other blogs here, I guess you actually *are* serious.

You *seriously* need to read your Bible, Gray. In light of my quoted question to you above, here are some verses to get you started:

"He WHO HEARS YOU [apostles] HEARS ME, and he who rejects you rejects me, and he who rejects me rejects him who sent me." [Luke 10:16]

“I will give YOU [Peter] the KEYS OF THE KINGDOM of heaven, and WHATEVER YOU BIND on earth SHALL BE BOUND IN HEAVEN, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." [Mat 16:19]

“As they went on their way through the cities, they delivered to them FOR OBSERVANCE THE DECISIONS which had been reached BY THE APOSTLES and elders who were at Jerusalem.
So the churches were strengthened in the faith, and they increased in numbers daily.” [Acts 16:4-5]

“I write this while I am away from you, in order that when I come I may not have to be severe in my use of THE AUTHORITY WHICH THE LORD HAS GIVEN ME for building up and not for tearing down.” [2 Cor 13:10]

“Declare these things; exhort and reprove with ALL AUTHORITY. Let no one disregard you.” [Titus 2:15]

‘I have written something to the church; but Gray Falcon, I mean, Diot'rephes, who likes to put himself first, does not acknowledge MY AUTHORITY.’ [cf. 3 John 1:9]

“that THROUGH THE CHURCH the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places.
This was according to the eternal purpose which he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord” [Eph 3:10-11]

“if I am delayed, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is THE CHURCH of the living God, THE PILLAR AND BULWARK OF THE TRUTH.” [1 Tim 3:15]

Are you serious?
Tell.. me… grey…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsozyGR6Eo4

See Noevo,

Apologists for the Catholic Church continue to worship Pontius Pilate.

We convicted the heretic, but we handed him over to the state for punishment and we wash our hands of the matter. We don't have any control over what happens.

Of course, the secular heads of these countries were crowned by the popes, so they want to do what pleases the popes. No coercion of any kind would be perceived by someone who looks the other way and makes excuses for these shenanigans.

Catholic morality doesn't change?

When did the Catholic Church develop their opposition to abortion?

The Catholic Church developed its opposition to slavery a little earlier than most organizations. This is one of the few things that the Church did right, before, rather than after the rest of society.

However, this change policy on slavery was still a change in the moral rules of the Church.

I let SN out of killfile jail and see that the Catholic Church *protected* knowledge??? The very same Catholic Church that plunged Europe into the Dark Ages and kept it there, ages after Islam had recognized and developed things like, oh, higher mathematics, medicine (although still basic, was FAR more advanced than Europe), and kept libraries alive instead of a)burning them entirely or b)tucking all books away into monasteries?

The Catholic Church, which believed that Jews were baby-killers and drank the blood of Christian babies? Kept Jews locked up into ghettos and allowed open season on them whenever things went wrong, as it *had* to be the Jew's fault?

The Catholic Church, where, if you had enough money, you could be reassured you would go to heaven, as you could buy indulgences, pay beaucoup bucks to get others to pray for you, etc, so it didn't matter how you lived life?

The Catholic Church, who allowed the abuse of women in Magdelene convents and laundries? Allowed the abuse of young boys and hid it by shifting the priests around? Allowed a priest to refuse my mother communion at the alter rail?

SN - I'd say you'd made me laugh at your stupidity and ignorance, but thinking of all the abuses of the Catholic Church just makes me sad.

Jesus stated the accumulation of earthly wealth and power was a sin, the Catholic church is built on those. They chose to disregard Christ's teachings, they cannot be called his church.

To Delphine #221:

You: “You are not my confessor or my priest, asshole.”

Ouch! That’s one more to add to your sin list when you DO see your priest confessor. I mean, in addition to the pro-abortion, pro-contraception, etc.

BTW, DO you participate in the sacrament of reconciliation (a.k.a. confession)?

Do you act like the first Catholic who ever Catholiced with everyone, or just here?

I grew up in a heavily Catholic area, went to Catholic day school, then was sent overseas to a Catholic boarding school. I did my grad work at a Jesuit university. You're easily the most deluded, dogmatic Catholic I've ever encountered.

And to answer your question, yes, I do. And we send our child to Catholic school. And we attend Mass. Where we worship with people who are kind and welcoming and forgiving.

Ouch! That’s one more to add to your sin list when you DO see your priest confessor. I mean, in addition to the pro-abortion, pro-contraception, etc.

Have you ever printed out your on-line antics and asked a priest how he thought your camel was doing with that getting through the eye of a needle thing?

When you think of internal threats to the United States don't think of the extremely rare folks like the couple in San Bernardino, guilty of horrific and senseless acts in communities, think of people like sn who are actively working to defund science, education, rights, access of women to healthcare, and the already meagre social welfare net. The tea-baggers would drag the country to a place suitable for rich white folks and nobody else

@Narad - did you mean, "with getting the beam out of your own eye?" Unless See Noevo is rich as well as hypocritical.

To Rogue Medic #230:

“When did the Catholic Church develop their opposition to abortion?”

I don’t know off hand, but it was probably pretty early, given meditations on revelations like Luke 1:43.

“However, this change policy on slavery was still a change in the moral rules of the Church.”

Developing a formal stance on an issue for which you never before had a formal stance should not be considered a "change".
Perhaps, just maybe, you could forgive the Catholic Church for not immediately and explicitly condemning something (i.e. slavery) that was not even condemned by its Founder and Purpose, Jesus Christ.
It’s a curious thing. Maybe Jesus had so many other sins to condemn (e.g. adultery, fornication, murder) that He just never got around to it.

By the way, abortion, specifically, murdering a baby in the womb, is objectively far worse than slavery. At least a slave is treated fairly well and kept alive and healthy, because otherwise he’s not much use to the master. [In fact, back in the B.C. days, slavery may have been the most attractive survival option for some people.] And as long as he’s alive, the slave has the hope of freedom. Many slaves in the U.S., of course, eventually DID see freedom. The tender targets in the womb aren’t so lucky.

good god - sn never ceases to amaze with his demonstrations of how large an ass he is.

By the way, abortion, specifically, murdering a baby in the womb, is objectively far worse than slavery

Apparently God doesn't feel that way, since murdering a slave is a capital crime* whereas causing a woman to miscarry only requires one to pay a fine to her husband (as long as the woman herself doesn't die) (Exodus 20:22). Some pro-lifers try to reinterpret this passage as referring to premature birth rather than miscarriage, but most of the commentaries written before abortion became a political issue seem to take it for granted that the phrase "so that her fruit depart" refers to a miscarriage, which makes sense since a premature birth would have been practically guaranteed to result in death in the days before modern medicine.

*Unless, of course, you merely beat the slave to within an inch of his/her life, and he/she dies a few days later - then YHWH says the loss of the slave is punishment enough (Exodus 21:20 - 21)

Do you act like the first Catholic who ever Catholiced with everyone, or just here?

Delphine -- remember, this is the poster who boasted that he/she should be offered the opportunity to meet with the Pope, in order to correct him on certain topics (during the Papal visit this September).

To Delphine #233:

“You’re easily the most deluded, dogmatic Catholic I’ve ever encountered.”

Dogma can be a good thing. And the Catholic Church’s dogma is all good in a Catholic’s eyes. Otherwise, the “Catholic” wouldn’t really be Catholic.

So, “dogmatic” is not necessarily a derogatory term, of course. But apparently you’ve intended it as such, as you’ve paired it with “deluded.”

Would you please give one example of where you think I’m “dogmatic”
and one where you think I’m “deluded”, in the context of Catholic teaching?

Fuck off.

Do you act like the first Catholic who ever Catholiced with everyone, or just here?

Delphine — remember, this is the poster who boasted that he/she should be offered the opportunity to meet with the Pope, in order to correct him on certain topics (during the Papal visit this September).

I was about to type "you're kidding", thought the better of it.

To Sarah A #240:

Me: “By the way, abortion, specifically, murdering a baby in the womb, is objectively far worse than slavery”

You: “Apparently God doesn’t feel that way, since murdering a slave is a capital crime* whereas causing a woman to miscarry only requires one to pay a fine to her husband…”

You refer to Exodus 21:20-22.
The death of the baby sounds like manslaughter, at most. Like an unintended, secondary effect of the people fighting. The penalty for such a death back then, as well as now, would be expected to be less than for murder.

See Noinfo says, "I would, however, consider addressing one, JUST ONE, of your points (e.g. from #182).
You pick. Throw your favorite flag."
First off I was refuting your claim about the church's body count for the last 500 years - "approximately zero".
So let's go over it again. The church used to be a secular power controlling the Papal States until the later 19th Century, and those states fought wars and administered what used to pass for justice in those times. Refute that, can you?
Church participation in the Croatian part of the Holocaust? "In all, there would be 22 concentration camps in the NDH, almost half of which were commanded by Roman Catholic Croatian priests." (from this site - http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/othercamps/jasenovac.html)
Deaths over and above the abuses and torture in the Magdalene laundries? http://www.irishcentral.com/news/1663-Irish-women-died-in-Magdalene-lau…
For the actions, or better, inaction, of Pope Pius XII regarding the Holocaust and the Adreatine caves massacre, try the book "Hitler's Pope".
Aid to wanted Nazi and Fascist war criminals? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratlines_%28World_War_II_aftermath%29 and https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/how-the-catholic-church-she…
See Noinfo, this is how I picture you after you start to read this: https://ixquick-proxy.com/do/spg/show_picture.pl?l=english&rais=1&oiu=h…

I almost forgot this one: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2014/06/09/the-truth…

I carried a baby with a lethal aneuploidy, a baby with half his heart. My son would have been born without the ability to even suckle for comfort, doomed to a short life of pain and useless intervention. I prayed for my boy to die in my womb so I wouldn't have to go through with an abortion. He did die and I didn't have to do it. You are less forgiving than any priest with whom I've ever sought counsel. By far. You're just an asshole wearing the mask of religion.

@#244 - Nope.

@Narad – did you mean, “with getting the beam out of your own eye?” Unless See Noevo is rich as well as hypocritical.

Eh, it doesn't matter. He's been asked the same basic question before, and the answer is always the same: he doesn't have the balls to submit his activities to pastoral evaluation.

He's just a frustrated, 60-year-old bachelor for life.

@Delphine - I am so sorry; I can't even imagine going through something like that.

@See Noevo - Looks like someone need to spend more time reading his bible. God specifically addresses involuntary manslaughter - the killer's like was still technically forfeit, but he (or she) could escape vengeance "in a place I [God] have set aside" (Exodus 20:13), which became the 6 cities of refuge once the Hebrews conquered Israel by brutally slaughtering and enslaving the original inhabitants entered the Promised Land. Even within the passage to which I referred, God specifies that the attacker only gets off with a fine if the woman isn't seriously injured or killed. If she is, the payment is still "life for life, eye for eye..." etc. (Exodus 20:23 - 25.) In short, It's abundantly clear that God does not, in fact, consider the life of an unborn baby to be equivalent to that of an adult.

The moral of the story - don't try to argue scripture with a recovering fundamentalist.

^The killer's life was still technically forfeit

To Sarah A #251:

“@See Noevo – Looks like someone need to spend more time reading his bible.”

Looks like someone need to spend more time reading her bible,
and at least getting her chapter and verse numbers right.

You’re a “recovering fundamentalist”? What church are you in now, if any?
Maybe this one would suit you. Sounds like another new Protestant sect in the making:
http://denver.cbslocal.com/2015/12/03/stoner-jesus-bible-study-group-ge…

To Delphine #243:

Touché, mommy potty mouth!

@See Noevo - Really? You can nitpick about typos but you have nothing to say about the simple fact that your own holy book contradicts your views?

^To clarify for anyone following along, the verses I referred to are in Exodus 21, as stated at the end of my first post (#240), not Exodus 20.

Old Rockin’ Dave #246:

Me: “I’m not about to argue with you over every perceived transgression of the Catholic Church over the last hundreds or thousands of years. I would, however, *consider* addressing one, *JUST ONE*, of your points (e.g. from #182). You pick. Throw your favorite flag.”

You respond with yet another scatter gun blast of *multiple* incidents over hundreds of years to tally (although you gave no tally) murders and misdeeds of the Church.

You blew it.
My offer is withdrawn.

P.S.
IF your main point is that Catholic clergy and laity have been guilty of extremely un-Godly behavior over the last two millennia, you’ll get no argument from me.
In fact, I would be very surprised if many self-identified Catholics, including many priests and bishops (and who knows, maybe even some Popes), do NOT end up in hell.

Nevertheless, the gates of hell shall not prevail against the Church (cf. Mat 16:18). They never have in 2,000 years, and they never will. (The CC puts the Energizer bunny to shame.)

And I’d rather die than be anything but Catholic.

To Sarah A #255:

“@See Noevo – Really? You can nitpick about typos but you have nothing to say about the simple fact that your own holy book contradicts your views?”

Contradicts my view that the lot of a slave is better than that of the target of abortion?
I don’t see that. I don’t even need a Bible to not see that.

Contradicts my view that a miscarriage is not murder, not abortion?
I don’t see that either.

P.S.
Perhaps you missed my question earlier:
As a self-described “recovering fundamentalist”, what church are you in now, if any?

@ See Noevo - God says that killing a human being, even by accident, if punishable by death. God then says that causing a fetus to spontaneously abort by accident is not punishable by death. Ergo, God does not recognize the unborn fetus as being morally equivalent to an human being. If you're serious about not understanding my point, I honestly don't know how to make it any clearer to you. But I strongly suspect that you're just being deliberately obtuse in order to avoid the issue.

And since you're asking, I don't attend any church.

To Sarah A #259:

“God says that killing a human being, even by accident, if punishable by death.”

Where does it say that?

P.S.
Apparently, you missed my question yet again:
As a self-described “recovering fundamentalist”, what church are you in now, if any?

See Noinfo: You say "You respond with yet another scatter gun blast of *multiple* incidents over hundreds of years to tally (although you gave no tally) murders and misdeeds of the Church." I never agreed to take you up on your "offer" and I simply offered you some basic sources for my claims, sources which it would do you some good to investigate further. I have not only cited misdeeds by clergy, but actions, willful blindness, and policies that came from the highest levels of the Vatican, including any number of popes. I am merely pointing out to you that more than "approximately zero" deaths can be laid at the gates of the Vatican, by several orders of magnitude, and depending on how you count, they conceivably may add up to several millions. I don't quite care enough about your opinions to make the tally you seem to require, since many of these happenings are impossible to get accurate figures on instead of rough and problematic estimates (as in divorce, contraception, and abortion denial).
Evaluating those actions, etc., is a whole 'nother discussion, which would take us not merely down the rabbit hole, but down the TauTona mine.
I have cited facts which are on the whole irrefutable. How you would choose to justify or deny them is of scant interest to me.

Sheesh, I knew Catholics don't lay the same stress on the bible that protestant fundamentalists do, but this is ridiculous; I gave you the chapter and verse, FFS - do you even own a bible? If not, here's the passages I refer to (from the Contemporary English Version):

Death is the punishment for murder. But if you did not intend to kill someone, and I, the Lord, let it hapen anyway, you may run to safety to a place that I have set aside (Exodus 21:12 - 13)

This is elaborated on in Numbers 35:20 - 21:

Or suppose you get angry and kill someone by pushing or hitting or throwing something. You are a murderer and must be put to death by one of the victim's relatives (Numbers 35:20 - 21)

[Note that neither premeditation nor intent to kill are required - if you are fighting with someone and he/she dies as a result, God considers it murder]

But if you are not angry and accidentally kill someone in any of these ways, the townspeople must hold a trial and decide if you are guilty. If they decide that you are innocent, you will be protected from the victim's relative and sent to stay in one of the Safe Towns until the high priest dies. But if you ever leave the Safe Town and are killed by the victim's relative, he cannot be punished for killing you (Numbers 35:22 - 27)

Note that, even if the townspeople decide that the death was a complete accident (not just an unintended outcome of a conflict), you're not scott free - you still owe life for life, but you will be protected in one of the cities of refuge (that's from the KJV I grew up with, sometimes I think the CEV over-simplifies well-known and culturally significant terms unnecessarily.) If you leave the city, the avenger is still allowed to kill you, and it won't be considered murder on his part, because you still owe your life for the life you took.

This is just an interesting diversion, however, because the fact that God doesn't consider the unborn fetus's life to be equivalent to that of the mother is actually implicit in the passage I originally brought up:

Suppose a woman suffers a miscarriage as the result of an injury caused by someone who is fighting. If she isn't badly hurt, the one who injured her must pay whatever fine her husband demands and the judges approve. But if she is seriously injured, the payment will be life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, cut for cut, and bruise for bruise (Exodus 21:22 - 25)

Note that in this situation, the perpetrator doesn't intend to harm the woman - she is injured in the course of a fight between two men (that part is actually more explicit in he KJV). Nevertheless, if the woman is seriously injured (beyond the miscarriage itself) or killed, the same rule applies as if the perpetrator had actually injured or killed the man he was fighting with - life for life, eye for eye, etc. But if the only death is that of the fetus, only a fine is imposed. Obviously, God doesn't consider the life of the unborn to be equivalent to that of an adult.

P.S. I didn't miss your question, you missed my answer - at the end of #259

To Sarah A #262:

“Obviously, God doesn’t consider the life of the unborn to be equivalent to that of an adult.”

So it would seem.

And obviously, God doesn’t consider slave owning sinful.
Not even Jesus condemned slavery.

So maybe abortion and slavery are OK today, Scripturally speaking.
……………….
“I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.
When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.” [John 16:12-13]

Truth, what is truth? How can we know it?

“that THROUGH THE CHURCH the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places.” [Ephesians 3:10]

“if I am delayed, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is THE CHURCH of the living God, THE PILLAR AND BULWARK OF THE TRUTH.”
[1 Timothy 3:15]

P.S.
I’m sorry to hear you don’t attend any church.
Particularly *the* Church.

P.S.
I’m sorry to hear you don’t attend any church.
Particularly *the* Church.

You really don't understand how badly you reek of utter desperation for attention, do you?

Purely hypocritical cowardice is probably the least of your character flaws.

Orac,

I feel a little sorry for you, and for Ben Carson.
Whatever happened to the focus on your blog against Ben?

It seems that whenever a blog is about someone questioning something scientists say (people who thus become science “deniers”, in the eyes of the Left) the commenters almost inevitably begin attacking religion, and ultimately condemning or at least criticizing the Catholic Church?
And before you know it, we’re talking about abortion and what not!

On this particular blog, Helianthus #25 was the first to bring up the CC (and Ben Carson isn’t even Catholic!). I think the majority of the over 230 comments that followed involved religion and especially Catholicism. (Yes, I contributed some of them. About 17% of them.)

Too bad Ben Carson isn’t Catholic. Then we could get him more in the mix here.

And I’d rather die than be anything but Catholic.

I don't think that tediously making an ass of yourself on the Intertubes is enough to pull off the (deranged, unsolicited) martyr routine.

See No Nuffin'

So the church doesn't evolve except when it does.

And those who subvert the thread bemoan the fact that the thread has been subverted.

Guess what:
Reason is not the same as rationalization.

What I've learned from SN:
Apparently faith makes an excellent excuse for rigid, intellectual laziness if not outright perfidy.

@See Noevo

“Obviously, God doesn’t consider the life of the unborn to be equivalent to that of an adult.”

So it would seem.

Well, I'll give you this much credit - I wasn't expecting even that much of a concession from you. So with end-of-semester deadlines looming I think I'll quit while I'm ahead.

And obviously, God doesn’t consider slave owning sinful.
Not even Jesus condemned slavery.

And now you know why I neither rely on, nor recommend, the bible as a source of moral guidance.

See Noevo,

“When did the Catholic Church develop their opposition to abortion?”

I don’t know off hand, but it was probably pretty early, given meditations on revelations like Luke 1:43.

Very Deepak Chopra, but it has nothing to do with abortion.

“However, this change policy on slavery was still a change in the moral rules of the Church.”

Developing a formal stance on an issue for which you never before had a formal stance should not be considered a “change”.

The Catholic Church approved of slavery, then changed its mind.

It is good when they improve their morality, but there is still too much immorality ordered by the Church.

Perhaps, just maybe, you could forgive the Catholic Church for not immediately and explicitly condemning something (i.e. slavery) that was not even condemned by its Founder and Purpose, Jesus Christ.

Why didn't your Gods know that slavery is immoral?

It’s a curious thing. Maybe Jesus had so many other sins to condemn (e.g. adultery, fornication, murder) that He just never got around to it.

Slavery is unimportant?

Your Gods are excellent examples of immorality and incompetence.

And then you give a long example of a childish excuse.

Morality appears to be whatever allows you to do whatever you want.

What I’ve learned from SN:
Apparently faith makes an excellent excuse for rigid, intellectual laziness if not outright perfidy.

I suspect s/he was an asshole long before s/he converted.

To Rogue Medic #269:

You: “When did the Catholic Church develop their opposition to abortion?”

Me: “I don’t know off hand, but it was probably pretty early, given meditations on revelations like Luke 1:43.”

You: “Very Deepak Chopra, but it has nothing to do with abortion.”

Sure it does, if you think about it just a little.
…………….
You: “However, this change policy on slavery was still a change in the moral rules of the Church.”

Me: “Developing a formal stance on an issue for which you never before had a formal stance should not be considered a “change”.”

You: “The Catholic Church approved of slavery, then changed its mind.”

When and where did the approval happen?
……………….
“Your Gods are excellent examples of immorality and incompetence.”

From what we know of Jesus Christ, would you say he was crazy and/or evil?

From what we know of Jesus Christ, would you say he was crazy and/or evil?

Fictional.

But, if you wish to play that game, after reading the bible, would you say his father was a murderous psychopath or simply a fan of genocide?

See Noevo,

You: “Very Deepak Chopra, but it has nothing to do with abortion.”

Sure it does, if you think about it just a little.

That is why there are so many different ways of interpreting the Bible - the people who wrote were writing like Deepak Chopra and his ilk. Chopra, and others, want you to think they are profound, when they are just vague and meaningless.

See Noevo,

You: “However, this change policy on slavery was still a change in the moral rules of the Church.”

Me: “Developing a formal stance on an issue for which you never before had a formal stance should not be considered a “change”.”

You: “The Catholic Church approved of slavery, then changed its mind.”

When and where did the approval happen?

Some examples of Catholic-approved/Catholic-ordered slavery (as part of canon law) from Wikipedia -

In the early thirteenth century, official support for slavery and the slave trade was incorporated into Canon Law (Corpus Iuris Canonici), by Pope Gregory IX,.[62] Canon law provided for four just titles for holding slaves: slaves captured in war, persons condemned to slavery for a crime; persons selling themselves into slavery, including a father selling his child; children of a mother who is a slave.

Slavery was imposed as an ecclesiastical penalty by General Councils and local Church councils and Popes, 1179-1535...

(a) The crime of assisting the Saracens 1179-1450.....

(b) The crime of selling Christian slaves to the Saracens 1425. Pope Martin V issued two constitutions. Traffic in Christian slaves was not forbidden, but only their sale to non Christian masters.

(d) Unjust aggression or other crimes, 1309-1535. The penalty of capture and enslavement for Christian families or cities or states was enacted several times by Popes. Those sentenced included Venetians in 1309.[63]

Pope Gregory XI, excommunicated the Florentines and ordered them to be enslaved if captured[64] Little seems to have happened before the order was removed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_and_slavery#Slavery_incor…

See Noevo,

“Your Gods are excellent examples of immorality and incompetence.”

From what we know of Jesus Christ, would you say he was crazy and/or evil?

Evil is a religious concept, like free will and original sin, so I would not use this magical term to describe something.

Jesus was probably just the same as the other apocalyptic preachers of that time.

Someone persuaded Constantine that some coincidence was due to Jesus magic, so one powerful person believed, and the official state religion caught on.

If the Christian Gods were so impressive, why did the followers so quickly abandon them and go worship so many other Gods?

If Jesus was so impressive, why did it take 40 years for somebody to write something down?

And why couldn't the Christian Gods come up with a means of passing on this information that was clear? You don't get 41,000 different flavors of Christianity from clear communication.

dean,

From what we know of Jesus Christ, would you say he was crazy and/or evil?

Fictional.

But, if you wish to play that game, after reading the bible, would you say his father was a murderous psychopath or simply a fan of genocide?

That's a trick question.

The God of the Bible is all three.

The God of the Bible is a fictional murderous psychopath who dabbled in genocide and - only one time - engaged in worldwide genocide to cover up the evidence of his unintelligent design.

To Rogue Medic #275:

“Someone persuaded Constantine that some coincidence was due to Jesus magic, so one powerful person believed, and the official state religion caught on.”

That must have been some marvelous magic, because I think the Roman Empire already had an official state religion with its own gods. But nobody’s followed Jupiter, Venus, Bacchus, etc. for many moons.

“Jesus was probably just the same as the other apocalyptic preachers of that time.”

Yeah, probably.
Maybe it’s like those guys in Acts 5 said:
“When they heard this they were enraged and wanted to kill them.
But a Pharisee in the council named Gama'li-el, a teacher of the law, held in honor by all the people, stood up and ordered the men to be put outside for a while.
And he said to them, "Men of Israel, take care what you do with these men.
For before these days Theu'das arose, giving himself out to be somebody, and a number of men, about four hundred, joined him; but he was slain and all who followed him were dispersed and came to nothing.
After him Judas the Galilean arose in the days of the census and drew away some of the people after him; he also perished, and all who followed him were scattered.
So in the present case I tell you, keep away from these men and let them alone; for if this plan or this undertaking is of men, it will fail;
but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them. You might even be found opposing God!"
So they took his advice, and when they had called in the apostles, they beat them and charged them not to speak in the name of Jesus, and let them go.”

Almost 2,000 years, and still going… the CC bunny.

...........
P.S.
“And why couldn’t the Christian Gods come up with a means of passing on this information that was clear?”

Consider it done, a long time ago.
It’s called the Church (cf. 1 Tim 3:15).

Someone persuaded Constantine that some coincidence was due to Jesus magic, so one powerful person believed, and the official state religion caught on

It's debatable whether or not Constantine was a believer at all. Christianity had already caught on to the point that ceasing to persecute Christians was a politically advantageous move for him anyway..

He did convert on his deathbed. But he didn't need some random "someone" to show him the light. His mother (by whom he was raised) was a Christian -- Saint Helena, who's best known for discovering the True Cross.

The Morgan Library a beautiful little gold altar/reliquary with Mosan enamels that show her embarking on the quest for it by throwing Jews into a fire so that they'd tell her where it was. The Stavelot Tryptych, it's called.

Triptych.

I always spell that wrong.

Almost 2,000 years, and still going… the CC bunny.

Gautama squints at you.

See Noevo,

I see that you only respond to comments when you can suggest that the popularity of your flavor of Christianity is somehow more special than the other flavors.

P.S.
“And why couldn’t the Christian Gods come up with a means of passing on this information that was clear?”

Consider it done, a long time ago.
It’s called the Church (cf. 1 Tim 3:15).

Everything you cite is just a matter of interpretation of a predecessor of Deepak Chopra.

41,000 different interpretations and your interpretation is just another one.

It is special to you and to the few others who share your specific interpretation. As has already been demonstrated, there are even many versions of Catholic.

Your type of Catholic is probably going to be left behind as the rest of Catholicism abandons the ancient immorality that your revere.

Catholicism abandoned its defense of slavery.

Catholicism abandoned its executions for heresy.

Catholicism abandoned its wars of conquest.

Catholicism abandoned its opposition to science.

While it is slow to learn, eventually Catholicism does seem to abandon many of its immoral practices. So can you.

That should read -

Your type of Catholic is probably going to be left behind as the rest of Catholicism abandons the ancient immorality that you revere.

@Rogue Medic: now if they Catholic Church would only become intelligent and remove its prohibition of birth control, abortions would probably decrease immensely, making everyone happy. After all, almost every women would rather prevent an unwanted pregnancy instead of having to have an abortion.

After all, that was the basic premise for Planned Parenthood: Every child a WANTED child.

Gah! "almost every woman" Too early and the coffee hasn't kicked in enough for proofreading.

And SN keep failing History forever.
The interested lurker can just hop in at wikipedia or any other educational site for some basic historical facts about, oh well, everything, from hospitals to common law to slavery in Old Europe.

Re: slavery

It’s a curious thing. Maybe Jesus had so many other sins to condemn (e.g. adultery, fornication, murder) that He just never got around to it.

Wait, slavery has nothing to do with adultery, fornication, murder?

I stand by Granny Weatherwax definition of sin, as a starting point. Sin is when you treat people like things.

"They never have in 2,000 years, and they never will. (The CC puts the Energizer bunny to shame.)"
The Orthodox church is at least as old as the Catholic, and also has shown great staying power, and has every right to argue that it is the true and original Christian church.
Judaism, Buddhism, and Hinduism are all far older and show no signs of dying out.
The religious beliefs of ancient Egypt lasted three thousand years.
Come back and make your case a thousand years from now.

To Old Rockin’ Dave #286:

Me: “They never have in 2,000 years, and they never will. (The CC puts the Energizer bunny to shame.)”

You: “Judaism, Buddhism, and Hinduism are all far older and show no signs of dying out. The religious beliefs of ancient Egypt lasted three thousand years.”

I’m not talking about religious beliefs, per se.
I’m talking about an *organization*, as in a body of people with mission statement and doctrines and rules, and with a hierarchy of “management”, and a visible head/“CEO”.

Who’s the global “CEO” of Judaism, of Buddhism, of Hinduism?

P.S.
And quick, without peeking, who’s the head of the Orthodox Church right now?

Sn, thanks for admitting the Catholic Church is nothing more than a multinational corporation.

The last individual who committed such a sin of pride as SN, was Lucifer, himself.....

And I'm not quite sure how that definition would be considered "better" given that the CC has, for long periods of its history, been nothing more than a tool of kings, or worse, a political body dedicated to nothing but abject power (like electing a Borgia as Pope).

To Lawrence #290:

“And I’m not quite sure how that definition would be considered “better” given that the CC has, for long periods of its history, been nothing more than a tool of kings, or worse, a political body dedicated to nothing but abject power (like electing a Borgia as Pope).”

How are those kings and their kingdoms, and those Borgias, carrying on *today*? How many years is their tenure up to now?

How many years is their tenure up to now?

About 5 foot 4.

"I’m not talking about religious beliefs, per se.
I’m talking about an *organization*, as in a body of people with mission statement and doctrines and rules, and with a hierarchy of “management”, and a visible head/“CEO”.
Who’s the global “CEO” of Judaism, of Buddhism, of Hinduism?"
None of them need one. That's the biggest reason for our endurance.
No one is exactly the "CEO" of the Orthodox Church. The "official" head of the Orthodox Church is Jesus Christ. The de facto, though not de jure, leader is the Ecumenical Patriarch. Currently that's Bartholomew I, though his leadership is described as primus inter pares.
Meanwhile, your hierarchy of management is a dismal failure in many areas. Much of it is a self-perpetuating bureaucracy committed to its own privileges, and capable of thwarting any attempt at reform. The Church has allowed many of its personnel to run amok, engaging in all kinds of sins with little fear of consequences. It's been in a long slow decline for centuries now, and its long survival owes more to its secular operations than its religious ones.
Just by the way, how do you feel about your pontifex maximus having a pre-Christian Roman priesthood among his titles?

To Old Rockin’ Dave #293:

Me: “[In terms of historical longevity] I’m not talking about religious beliefs, per se.
I’m talking about an *organization*, as in a body of people with mission statement and doctrines and rules, and with a hierarchy of “management”, and a visible head/“CEO”. Who’s the global “CEO” of Judaism, of Buddhism, of Hinduism?”

You: “None of them need one. That’s the biggest reason for our endurance.”

And the biggest reason for, as you say, “41,000 different flavors of Christianity”.

But “OUR” endurance?
Are you of the Judaism or Buddhism or Hinduism persuasion?
…………..
Me: “And quick, without peeking, who’s the head of the Orthodox Church right now?”

You: “The de facto, though not de jure, leader is the Ecumenical Patriarch. Currently that’s Bartholomew I, though his leadership is described as primus inter pares.”

Wow. You’re pretty good for not peeking. I wouldn’t even have come up with Bartholomew absent a little Googling. I’d bet the majority of the folks out there wouldn’t either.
(But I’d bet they would come up with the title and the name of the head of the Catholic Church.)
………….
“Meanwhile, your hierarchy of management is a dismal failure in many areas. Much of it is a self-perpetuating bureaucracy committed to its own privileges, and capable of thwarting any attempt at reform. The Church has allowed many of its personnel to run amok, engaging in all kinds of sins with little fear of consequences. It’s been in a long slow decline for centuries now…”

I agree.
………………
“Just by the way, how do you feel about your pontifex maximus having a pre-Christian Roman priesthood among his titles?”

How do I feel about it? Probably about the same as I do the Vicar of Christ also being called “papa” (i.e. Pope).

Wow, is that old pervert (^) still going on and on about "peeking under the hood"? Must be jealousy.

See Noevo- Jesus Christ is the head of the Christian Church, always and forever.

The power of an organization often has little to do with how well-known its current chief executive is. There are probably a lot of people who would tell you that the CEO of Microsoft is Bill Gates; the company profits, and its influence on the computer industry and my local economy, don't depend on them getting it right.

Is it hubris to put that much of your ego into the fame of someone you have no influence on or direct interaction with?

Are you of the Judaism or Buddhism or Hinduism persuasion?

I had no idea that S.N.'s Torquemadita routine could actually descend even further.

"Later, Carl and Bernie told me Meat Hook had told them, in describing the way he ran his drug clinic in Harlem, that he didn’t 'fool around with these characters.' He took them to a darkened back room and examined their cοcks by the light of a candle to make sure no drugs were concealed under foreskins. He also sang the Star Spangled Banner at football games, my favorite sidelight on this incredibly demonic personality. With enemies like Meat Hook, one might ask, who needed friends?"

^ Eh, close the italics after "Banner" in your minds.

Let's see, as recently as the past few years, the Vatican Bank was used to launder money for a variety of mafia organizations....

So when exactly do you have a "cut-off" for scandalous behavior? Because it can be argued that the cover-up of the massive abuses committed by priests continues to this day......

To Lawrence #300:

“So when exactly do you have a “cut-off” for scandalous behavior?”

Unfortunately, probably not until the Second Coming.
Scandalous behavior has been seen in the Church from the start (e.g. Judas Iscariot, an apostle hand-picked by Christ himself), and in its earliest days:
“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.” [Mat 7:15]

“Take heed to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God which he obtained with the blood of his own Son.
I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock;
and from among your own selves will arise men speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them.
Therefore be alert, remembering that for three years I did not cease night or day to admonish every one with tears.”
[Acts 20:28-31]

And the wolves have been within the Church, ‘from among our own selves’, ever since. For those to whom much is given, much is expected. And I think there will be a great deal of hell to pay, as I noted in #257’s P.S.

I think See the creep just described itself...

Exactly gaist....

See- I will concede one point. Churches are, indeed, meant to enact Christ's will on Earth. So why should I trust a church that only cares about itself? The Lutheran church hasn't covered up any sex scandals, nor has the Episcopal, Methodist, or Orthodox churches. Why not join them instead?

The Lutheran church hasn’t covered up any sex scandals, nor has the Episcopal, Methodist, or Orthodox churches.

I'm not sure about the first three there, but that's not entirely true about the Orthodox Church. They do have a much better record than the RCC, though. Letting parish priests marry probably helps a lot.

^Blockquote fail, but, oh, you guys get it.

The leadership of the Methodist church takes an especially vile position on homosexuality, however. In that sense they are just as disgusting as the leaders of the RCC.

See Noevo,

You: “However, this change policy on slavery was still a change in the moral rules of the Church.”

Me: “Developing a formal stance on an issue for which you never before had a formal stance should not be considered a “change”.”

You: “The Catholic Church approved of slavery, then changed its mind.”

When and where did the approval happen?

Some examples of Catholic-approved/Catholic-ordered slavery (as part of canon law) from Wikipedia –

Slavery was imposed as an ecclesiastical penalty by General Councils and local Church councils and Popes, 1179-1535…

(a) The crime of assisting the Saracens 1179-1450…..

(b) The crime of selling Christian slaves to the Saracens 1425. Pope Martin V issued two constitutions. Traffic in Christian slaves was not forbidden, but only their sale to non Christian masters.

Pope Gregory XI, excommunicated the Florentines and ordered them to be enslaved if captured[64] Little seems to have happened before the order was removed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_and_slavery#Slavery_incor…

Can we expect any explanation for this blatant reversal on morality by the Catholic Church?

Why can't the Catholic Church tell what is moral?

To Gray Falcon #304:

“So why should I trust a church that only cares about itself? The Lutheran church hasn’t covered up any sex scandals, nor has the Episcopal, Methodist, or Orthodox churches.”

From what I remember reading, the incidence of sexual abuse is about the same in Protestantism, as well as in Judaism, Islam. It may be even worse in the public schools. (The coverups *might* be as bad, as well, given how seldom you hear about them compared to the CC.)

Here’s a short piece on Evangelicals:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/01/protestant-sex-abuse-boz-tchiv…

“Why not join them instead?”

Never.

“Why not join them instead?”

Never.

Whelp, have it your way, I suppose!

See Noevo,

You: “However, this change policy on slavery was still a change in the moral rules of the Church.”

Me: “Developing a formal stance on an issue for which you never before had a formal stance should not be considered a “change”.”

You: “The Catholic Church approved of slavery, then changed its mind.”

When and where did the approval happen?

Some examples of Catholic-approved/Catholic-ordered slavery (as part of canon law) from Wikipedia –

Slavery was imposed as an ecclesiastical penalty by General Councils and local Church councils and Popes, 1179-1535…

(a) The crime of assisting the Saracens 1179-1450…..

(b) The crime of selling Christian slaves to the Saracens 1425. Pope Martin V issued two constitutions. Traffic in Christian slaves was not forbidden, but only their sale to non Christian masters.

Pope Gregory XI, excommunicated the Florentines and ordered them to be enslaved if captured[64] Little seems to have happened before the order was removed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_and_slavery#Slavery_incor…

Can we expect any explanation for this blatant reversal on morality by the Catholic Church?

Why can’t the Catholic Church tell what is moral?

Why do you try to answer other questions, but keep avoiding this question?

Then we can address other examples of the Catholic Church changing its stance on morality.

To Rogue Medic #311:

There was no “blatant reversal on morality by the Catholic Church.”

The linked piece below may help you understand why.

http://www.catholiceducation.org/en/controversy/common-misconceptions/l…

So creepy See, you're arguing that the Church and the Papacy just lost their way for hundreds of years and made slavery an official part of their Canon Law, but that did not somehow end up being a "blatant reversal of morality"? What would you call it? A moral hiccup?

And that's just for slavery. Officially sanctioned killings went on for much much longer, among other sins.

New Carson Links To Mannatech

http://www.wsj.com/articles/ben-carsons-ties-to-mannatech-are-many-1450…

The article talks about Carson recommending Mannatech products to his patients (one who was interviewed spent $2,600 on Mannatech supplements for his daughter's epilepsy without finding them useful), referring them to his "personal assistant", a Mannatech associate who now works for his campaign.

"In a 2009 letter to Mannatech’s then-CEO, Mr. Carson thanked the company for a $25,000 donation to help fund an endowed professorship Mr. Carson had been awarded by Johns Hopkins, according to a copy reviewed by The Wall Street Journal."

“May God continue to richly bless the entire organization as you serve Him and mankind,” Mr. Carson wrote. Mannatech’s products have often been marketed to an evangelical Christian audience."

"In the interview, Mr. Carson said the letter was sent in error. He said he solicited the gift by asking Mannatech to donate funds in lieu of payment for something he didn’t specify, but “there is no record of it having being received.” Hopkins said it won’t comment on donors."

See Noevo,

That apologist site claims that the Catholic Church "tolerated" slavery and did not have any policy opposing slavery.

Then there was the magical, but not divine, recognition of the obvious.

Slavery is immoral.

Slavery has always been immoral.

The Catholic Church has not only not known this, but has endorsed slavery - as I documented above.

There is no morality in the morning Catholic Church.

There are only dishonest excuses for the extensively documented history of immorality by the Catholic Church.

The Catholic Church participated in slavery, because the Catholic Church had no moral objections to slavery.

The Catholic Gods didn't know that slavery is immoral.

The word "morning" should not appear above.

It appears to be a bit of humor from the gods of predictive text.

I still have to redo the story in response to S.N.'s fantasy about slipping Pope Francis a "sneaky Pete" carefully worded letter of corrections, but this was too good not to be memorialized. (Image here.)

Narad,

That one sentence contains so much that is wrong, but See Noevo, and the rest of the big government promotion of religion types, will never understand.

If anything, See Noevo is the Pee Wee Herman of ___________. Insert any subject that requires understanding that he chooses to comment on.

There is always the possibility that Noevo is a Poe, making intentionally ridiculous comments.

He seems to think that his Gods were too busy to tell anyone that slavery is wrong, while ignoring the Catholic Church's orders to enslave people.

There is a moral lesson here, but it is apparently well beyond the understanding of See Noevo.

Ben Carson: A case study on why intelligent people are often not skeptics

oracknows — Fri, 06 Nov 2015 08:30:43 +0000

Ben Carson: A case study on why intelligent people are often not skeptics

As a surgeon, I find Ben Carson particularly troubling. By pretty most reports, he was a skilled neurosurgeon who practiced for three decades, rising to the chief of neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins. Yet, when he ventures out of the field of neurosurgery—even out of his own medical specialty—he routinely lays down some of the dumbest howlers I've ever heard. For example, he denies evolution, but, even worse, he's been a shill for a dubious supplement company, Mannatech. Worse still, when called out for his relationship with Mannatech in the last Republican debate, Carson lied through his teeth about it. The pseudoscientific views he relates have been so bad that he led me to resurrect some old schtick that I had abandoned years ago about physicians denying evolution leading me to put a paper bag over my head in shame for my profession. I'm also reminded of it not just by media stories about Carson's latest verbal gaffe but because I work within easy walking distance of the Ben Carson High School of Medicine and Science, a STEM-related high school designed to encourage high school students to pursue careers in the sciences.

Most recently, video of a commencement speech he gave in 1998 was unearthed, and in it Carson contradicted the consensus among historians that the Egyptian pyramids were built as tombs for pharaohs and stated that he believed that they were, in fact, built by Joseph to store grain. (On the plus side, at least he said he didn't believe that aliens had anything to do with their construction.) His reasoning was—shall we say?—not convincing.

As a physician and a surgeon, I never cease to be amazed at how brilliant physicians, who are so knowledgeable and skilled at medicine, can be so irredeemably ignorant about topics not related to medicine, and even, as was the case with Ben Carson's dubious cancer cure testimonial for Mannatech, medical topics not related to their specific specialty. Indeed, Andy Borowitz nailed it well when portrayed Carson as "shattering the stereotype about brain surgeons being smart."

Or did he?

I was prodded to revisit this topic in a more general fashion first by Ben Carson's latest bomb of uncritical thinking (which shows that he's been the way he is for a long time, as the speech was from 1998), but also because Steve Novella brought it up as well. (It also helps that my last two posts have gotten crazy traffic for some reason, and I need, as Mr. Creosote was offered, a little wafer to cleanse the palate.) As much as I respect Steve, who, as usual, makes some most excellent points, as he asked (and tried to answer) the question, "How can one person be undeniably brilliant in one sphere of their intellectual life, and shockingly ignorant and anti-intellectual in other spheres?" regular followers of this blog know that there's always more that I can add when the mood takes me.

Before I begin, let me just say that I'm aware that, because of Carson's reputation as a brilliant neurosurgeon, certain activists on the left have been trying to discredit that reputation by dredging up malpractice cases that Carson has been involved in over the years. I've described these articles on Facebook as a cheap shot and intellectually dishonest, because they are. They examine Carson's record and compare it to physicians in general. Yet, according to a recent New England Journal of Medicine study, the most sued specialty is neurosurgery, with 19% of neurosurgeons per year being involved with at least one malpractice suit and roughly 99% of neurosurgeons being sued at least once before they retire. Comparing Carson's record to the record of the average doctor is a purposely deceptive comparison of apples and oranges. Carson's record should be compared to the records of neurosurgeons practicing in urban areas and doing high risk surgery of the sort that Carson did. Also the article only tells one side of the story, the plaintiffs', taking advantage of the fact that the hospital and Carson can't comment because of patient privacy concerns.

End of diversion.

Let's get back to the question of how someone as brilliant as Carson, who went to Yale University and attended medical school at the University of Michigan Medical School, followed by a neurosurgery residency at Johns Hopkins, can be so dense about so many things.

Steve is correct that Carson's brilliance as a neurosurgeon is not a contradiction, that we all share cognitive blindspots like his. All of us believe things without evidence, things that we find hard to let go of, even in the face of disconfirming evidence. This is undeniably true. I wouldn't, however, agree that Carson is a "perfect representation of humanity," for the simple reason that I think he represents an outlier, someone way on the end of the bell-shaped curve if you will. Most people don't hold dogmatically to so many bad ideas, or at least assert so many demonstrably incorrect ideas. Those who do tend to fall prey to crankery, like antivaccine activists, creationists, quacks, anti-GMO activists, and anthropogenic global climate change denialists. Carson clearly falls into this category, but why?

There appear to be two reasons, which Carson seems to exhibit in abundance. First, of course, is the Dunning-Kruger effect. This is a phenomenon in which humans with low expertise in a subject tend to overestimate their expertise in the subject and exhibit undue confidence in that expertise, which tends to be in marked contrast to real experts, who tend to underestimate their expertise on the subject and acknowledge a lot more uncertainty because, well, they know the limits of their knowledge. Physicians tend to be very prone to the Dunning-Kruger effect, for many reasons. Think about it. Medical school is very difficult to get into; so most doctors were excellent students all their lives before they became doctors. Once they get into medical school, they are not infrequently told how they are the "best of the best" and how they represent the future of medicine. I share one trait in common with Dr. Carson, and that's that I, too, graduated from the University of Michigan Medical School, and I still remember being told that on day one. I'd say that in some ways it's getting even worse. There was no such thing as a "white coat ceremony" at my medical school when I started, but these days most medical schools have a ceremony where the new class of students don their white coats as a symbol of the profession they are about to enter. I've never liked white coat ceremonies. Add to that residency, which, even after the 80 hour work week restrictions, is still like boot camp, designed to emphasize that we are tough enough to be physicians, and the sense that we are somehow "better" than the rest of society is reinforced.

Another issue is the privilege of physicians. Medical students might be at the bottom rung of the totem pole in the hospital, but they are told that they will soon be top dogs. And so they become top dogs. It's true that medical practice has become more collaborative over my time practicing surgery. Doctors are no longer the unquestioned kings (and queens) of the roost. However, they still hold enormous power and privilege in the hospital. That's not even counting the privilege that we as physicians are granted to probe the deepest secrets of our patients, administer medicine, and even, as surgeons do, forcibly rearrange people's anatomy for therapeutic intent. We get to see the innermost recesses of our patients' bodies. It's an incredible privilege that society has granted us. That privilege is reinforced by our being consulted not just for our expertise but by the assumption held by many that because we are experts in medicine we must be experts in a lot of other things too.

It's not surprising, then, that physicians might come to overestimate their ability to master another discipline, at least well enough to pontificate confidently on it. Of course we can! We're doctors! We made it through the ringer that is medical school, residency, and board certification. Just give me enough time and enough Google and we can learn anything! Is it any wonder that physicians are particularly prone to the Dunning-Kruger effect? Not to me, at least not any more. The same seems to be true of many other high-achieving people. There's a reason that most leaders in the antivaccine movement tend to be affluent, highly educated people. J.B. Handley, for instance, is a successful businessman who has basically said that he doesn't need to listen to us pointy-headed scientists and physicians; he's learned what he needs to learn about vaccines causing autism himself.

It's also correct that holding conspiracy beliefs and believing in pseudoscience do not mean that a person is stupid. Most people who hold such beliefs are not. In fact, thanks to the phenomenon of motivated reasoning, in which attacks on people's beliefs result in their clinging to them more tightly and where facts and evidence are used not to find the truth but to protect pre-existing views, it is often very intelligent people who are the most vocal proponents of pseudoscience. Their intelligence gives them a more potent skill set to protect their pre-existing beliefs against refutation than possessed by people of average or lower intelligence. Indeed, many of the people most invested in "integrating" alternative medicine (i.e., quackery) into medicine are incredibly intelligent physicians.

Every human being on the planet has the potential to believe the same nonsense that Ben Carson believes, and, make no mistake, his mass of pseudoscientific and conspiracy theory beliefs is enormous. In addition to his belief in Mannatech quackery, Carson believes that Barack Obama is part of a Communist conspiracy to bring down America, that gay rights is a Communist plot, and, of course, that the theory of evolution comes from Satan. Skepticism begins with recognizing this and having the humility to recognize that we all believe things without evidence. That's part of being human. Fortunately, once we recognize this, we can begin to test our beliefs against evidence and science and determine which ones are supported and which ones aren't. Most importantly, this testing must involve seeking out disconfirming evidence; otherwise we risk devolving into motivated reasoning, cherry picking evidence that supports our beliefs and discounting evidence that does not. We must be willing to change our minds when the evidence does not support our beliefs. It's a continuous, lifelong process.

Indeed, what disturbs me the most about Ben Carson is not that he holds these beliefs, although that certainly does disturb me. It's that he doesn't show any evidence of being willing to examine his own beliefs critically. He dismisses expert opinions and, when questioned, doubles down on previous inane statements. The only time he seems to change his mind is to pander, as he did when he reversed his support for school vaccine mandates at the first Republican debate. None of these are characteristics I want in my next President, regardless of politics. I've often quoted Dirty Harry that "a man's got to know his limitations." Think of skepticism as a tool to help us know our limitations with respect to knowledge and science.

oracknows Fri, 11/06/2015 - 03:30

Categories

Social Sciences

If only he'd seen this picture of the Great Las Vegas Grain Pyramid before his 1998 speech, he might have added space aliens to his hypothesis: http://images.cheapovegas.com/sites/www.cheapovegas.com/files/billboard…

Could it be that exposure to brain tissue during surgery provides a path for a currently unknown pathogen to infect neurosurgeons, producing a dumbing-down infection?

This would explain not only Ben Carson, but also Michael Egnor and Russell Blaylock's forays into inanity.

With the recent report on CNN that Dr. Carson may have fabricated important aspects of his childhood, I have to wonder what might happen if he actually gets to be president. The thought makes me cringe.

I understand about false memories and that he may not be lying, but, perhaps instead, this may be a form of confabulation, but he is way over the top with everything that is disturbing about human personalities.

I have the same feelings about most of the rest of the republican field and about everyone who has a prayer of getting the Republican nomination.

This is why everyone needs statistics. Statistics, used properly, is a tool to help you see what's really there instead of what you want to see, to get around the human brain's tendency to imagine patterns where no patterns truly exist.

Of course, knowing how to do statistics, even knowing it well, isn't enough. You also have to choose to critically examine your own beliefs. While it's not practical to examine every belief you hold all the time, definitely do it when you realize that a large number of relevant experts disagree with you.

If you want to know the solution to ALL the worlds problems, spend some time in a hospital doctors dining room. Dunning Kruger indeed.

A politician, intelligent or not, must pay attention to numbers. And skeptics are a tiny minority. Even in science, most people are guided by authority, not reason. I know a surgeon who is proud of having co-authored a paper in NEJM, even after it has been shown to be meaningless.

My wife and I went to listen to Dr. Carson at a college in PA a few years ago. He was fire and brimstone. He talked about institutionalized racism and how minorities were at a continuous disadvantage in many settings no matter how hard they tried to work. Yes, he hit on a lot of conservative ideas that were far-right, but he was also far-left in others.
I have the feeling that he is playing to the crowd, and I probably am not far off given how other presidential candidates behave in the primaries. As a middle-of-the-road voter, that is what turns me off about politics. That they are willing to lie, cheat and steal to win is very telling.
He's campaigning on not being a politician, but he's very much getting on-the-job training as such and is basically applying for a job as one. He's all cool, calm and collected right now because that seems to be what far-right voters want to see in a Black man. Raise his voice and attend a social rally and he's a "community agitator" like Obama. Stay quiet and with a calm demeanor and he's a "real Black man" according to Rupert Murdoch.
Finally, in my current adventure of trying to get this doctoral degree, I have met some very brilliant people who have some weird ways of looking at the world and/or say the most dumbfounding things. The ability to earn and hold a degree, and work on a brain, doesn't mean that your judgment is not subject to all the fallacies of being human.

If you want to know the solution to ALL the worlds problems, spend some time in a hospital doctors dining room. Dunning Kruger indeed.

Yes, it would be so much easier if the powers that be just turned over the running of the world to physicians. We can fix it better than Jeb. :-)

Ren also makes a good point. For whatever reason, Carson has apparently decided that there is no penalty for lying. He told the most blatant lie when he said he didn't have a relationship with Mannatech, and, other than Politifact calling the statement false and some grumbling here and there, he was right; he did suffer no penalty.

I believe that Carson once may have been an intelligent man, but he isn't any longer, and hasn't been since probably 1990. I suspect he may have dementia, or the tension of holding religious beliefs while trying to be scientific finally broke him, as it will break many other doctors and scientists.

"It’s also correct that holding conspiracy beliefs and believing in pseudoscience do not mean that a person is stupid."

Orac, I really appreciate that you made this point in the last few paragraphs. It's very easy for us, the scientific practitioners who enjoy and learn from this blog, to ridicule the quacks and fearmongers that we are up against. So much better to get inside their thought processes and egos, and explain in a fact-based manner that they are wrong. Thanks for helping me understand this apparent paradox. Maybe

Orac, I think that intelligence and skill or expertise (knowledge) are two very different thing. You can learn a whole lot on a topic and master it but be the dumbest of the dumb. Worse, i can lead you to the the arrogance of ignorance as you said (because you are good at something, you must be good at everything).

Education is one thing, but admitting that you don't know is way harder. It's way, way harder. And, in my opinion, it's where intelligence is : when you know that you don"t know and then that you have to think about it. It allow you to have no prior bias, and then you can think critically.

You can be brillant in one field, but that's not what makes you intelligent (it makes you good at it). You can be good student and not be intelligent

So people like Carson are dumb because they don't know that they don"t know. We are all a bit dumb (more or less), but when you add the fact that you are brillant at something you might became even more dumb.

"...the opinion of experts, when unanimous, must be accepted by non-experts as more likely to be right than the opposite opinion" - Bertrand Russell
Unanimity is unlikely in practical terms so I am happy with overwhelming (or even significant) consensus. And real experts by the way, no Google scholarly opinions count.

@ Chris Hickie:

I never knew that that pyramid was lit like that and was actually shocked when I flew into LV at night!

Chris@1: And they have this handy parking spot for their flying saucers nearby. I've never seen that pyramid at night (the only times I have ever been in Las Vegas was to change planes), but it is visible from at least one of the concourses at McCarran International Airport.

I've heard a couple of notions as to where Dr. Carson may have gotten the idea that the pyramids were for grain storage. One is that medieval scholars, who didn't know better (archeology hadn't been invented yet), thought that was their purpose. The other possibility is that Dr. Carson has spent too much time playing video games: in Civilization II, if you build the Great Pyramids wonder, you get a free granary in all of your cities.

Unfortunately it is not head scratching claims such as those noted above by Orac but the fact that he lied about being offered a scholarship to West Point that will get people's attention.

With the recent report on CNN that Dr. Carson may have fabricated important aspects of his childhood

Yes, there is the fact that none of the people who knew the young Ben Carson could corroborate any of the stories he told about his "wild youth."
There are the numerous things he's said about evolution, the Big Bang, homosexuality, and history, that are easily shown to be completely false with under ten minutes of checking.
Now we know he made up his story about the offer of a scholarship to West Point.
The answer to his question "Do you think I'm a pathological liar?" would seem to be obvious.

@Dangerous Bacon #2:

Could it be that exposure to brain tissue during surgery provides a path for a currently unknown pathogen to infect neurosurgeons, producing a dumbing-down infection?

That's an interesting hypothesis. Of course, you would only be able to test it by taking several samples from the brains of each of the people you mentioned. In the interests of science, I think they should volunteer to help.

@ Eric and Denise #14/15: I thought all the grain was for when the dead rose and were all really hungry entombed pyramid-dwelling zombies just waiting for Brendan Fraser to free them. That's a long time and how sad they weren't left a more paleo diet for the last few thousand years

@Eric Lund #15:

The other possibility is that Dr. Carson has spent too much time playing video games: in Civilization II, if you build the Great Pyramids wonder, you get a free granary in all of your cities.

By Civ IV, it changes to grant knowledge of all forms of government and the ability to swap from one to another without penalty. It doesn't seem to have been working for Cairo these last few years...

Carson believes that Barack Obama is part of a Communist conspiracy to bring down America, that gay rights is a Communist plot, and, of course, that the theory of evolution comes from Satan

I am not convinced that Carson believes, in a meaningful way, in anything. He is not concerned with the truth or falsity of statements, only in their operational value -- what does the audience want to be told?

A politician, intelligent or not, must pay attention to numbers

Really? A number of presidential candidates -- Carson among them -- have spoken on taxation and budgetary issues, and it became clear that they do not pay attention to numbers; they have only contempt for numbers.

I agree withthis thesis and I would direct everyone's attention - including our author - to the work of Micheal Shermer Who in his book and talks lays bare this phenomenon. And there is a subset of why very smart people can believe very wierd things. It goes along to what I think are the self-imposed limits of intelligence - the amazing ability of very smart people to convince themselves of very wierd and sometimes very dumb things. They are literally smart enough to baffle themselves

And here is a useful link

https://www.ted.com/talks/michael_shermer_on_believing_strange_things?l…

I am not convinced that Carson believes, in a meaningful way, in anything. He is not concerned with the truth or falsity of statements, only in their operational value — what does the audience want to be told?

I disagree. There's plenty of evidence that Carson believed wacky conspiracy theories before he ever decided to run for President—and that he really believes them:

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/09/ben-carson-conspiracy-theor…

I think there is one very point that Dr. Novella makes clear in his blog post that Orac hints at, and that is the fact that well all suffer from Dunning-Kruger. It is easy for those of us who identify as skeptics to think that only other people are bad at assessing their knowledge of a subject, but we all have a tendency to fall for these errors of thinking. Skepticism and science are the best tools we currently have to fight these cognitive biases.

"Hints at"? I downright said that all humans suffer to varying degrees from D-K and that I just viewed Ben Carson as an outlier on the bell-shaped curve of D-K tendencies in humans. :-)

"With the recent report on CNN that Dr. Carson may have fabricated important aspects of his childhood"

There are also questions being raised over his West Point story.

With the recent report on CNN that Dr. Carson may have fabricated important aspects of his childhood

Oops, link fail.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/11/06/carson-west-point-campaign-c…

I’ve heard a couple of notions as to where Dr. Carson may have gotten the idea that the pyramids were for grain storage.

But what was the sphinx for?

Not that anybody really has a definitive answer to that one. However, it is right there, smack-dab on the Giza plateau, cheek by jowl with the pyramids.You kind of can't miss it, in fact. And it's just not very obviously explicable in the context of grain storage.

I believe Carson stated he was offered a scholarship to West Point. In reality a cadet is not on a scholarship but is appointed to the academy. If you accept the appointment you are then a cadet officer in the army. Carson is old enough that if he had accepted the appointment; he would have had a obligatory term of military service (type on whether he graduated or not). Now days the obligatory service takes place after your second year.

But what was the sphinx for?
To scare giant mice away from the granaries.

Personally, I don't think Carson is lying about this. I think he really remembers it this way. Memory, as we have learned, is not like a movie of the past, It's easily molded and distorted by later experiences. What I suspect happened is that Carson really did meet Gen. Westmoreland and was thinking about applying for West Point but for whatever reason never did. Then, over the years, he forgot that he had just considered applying and came to remember that he had applied and been offered a scholarship. It happens all the time because our memories of events are easily molded and frequently evolve over time.

If you want to know the solution to ALL the worlds problems, spend some time in a hospital doctors dining room. Dunning Kruger indeed.

No. My husband belongs to a country club. There are plenty of non-physicians there who are capable of solving all of the world's problems too.

Also, too, Jacob-Kreutzfeldt.

Orac apparently is a surgeon specializing in oncology and also has a PhD in cellular physiology.
Yet he seems to present himself as an expert advocate in OTHER areas - such as evolution, climate change, GMOs.

Make me think of a quote I saw recently:

“I make a distinction between intellectuals and people of intellectual achievement. . . .
An intellectual feeds on indignation and really can’t get by without it. The perfect example is Noam Chomsky. When Chomsky was merely the most exciting and most looked-to and, in many ways, the most profound linguist in this country if not the world, he was never spoken of as an American intellectual. Here was a man of intellectual achievement. He was not considered an intellectual until he denounced the war in Vietnam, which he knew nothing about. Then he became one of America’s leading intellectuals. He remains one until this day, which finally has led to my definition of an intellectual: *An intellectual is a person who is knowledgeable in one field but speaks out only in others.*”
-Tom Wolfe

There are also questions being raised over his West Point story.

It's possible that he met with Westmoreland when he says, but it doesn't appear likely.

Other than that, looks to me like the questions have been settled. His campaign concedes that he did not apply to West Point, wasn't offered a scholarship to attend it, and couldn't have been offered a full scholarship, because West Point doesn't offer them.

I don't think he's really trying to get elected president anyway. But if he were, this would be a problem for him.

It’s possible that he met with Westmoreland when he says, but it doesn’t appear likely.

I'm given to understand that the Pentagon records show Westmoreland to be somewhere other than Detroit at the time.

Can anyone out there help me with something that’s in the news about Ben Carson - specifically, where it was that he ever stated that he had *actually applied* to West Point?

@Orac --

I don't think he's wittingly lying about any of it. He probably just sees conversion/redemption myth as a higher form of truth than truth. So that's the truth he tells.

But exaggerating your military credentials is politically problematic. So while the West Point thing is not fatal, it's also not great.

In conventional terms, anyway. But these days, who knows.

@hdb --

Well, OK. Fine. But what about the aliens? Why did they build the sphinx?

SN find Carson's autobiography

Yet he seems to present himself as an expert advocate in OTHER areas – such as evolution, climate change, GMOs.

Except that I never presented myself as an expert in these areas. I have, however, become about as knowledgeable in some of them as a non-expert can become. Because of that, I know what the scientific consensus is on these issues and a fair amount about why the consensus is what it is. I also accept the scientific consensus because it is more likely to be closer to the truth than the opinions of cranks.

See:

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2007/12/27/skepticism-and-the-scienti…

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2010/03/24/hostility-towards-a-scient…

I know a person who spoke at some length to Carson at a Washington gala fundraiser, or something, before he became famous. This person is an extremely intelligent and accomplished black intellectual.

His verdict was that Carson is "an idiot" in any field of knowledge outside of his subspecialty.

@#38 --

He said, repeatedly and unambiguously, in print, that he was offered a full scholarship to West Point, as you can see for yourself right here.

No school offers scholarships to students who haven't applied. Furthermore, West Point does not charge tuition.

Still yet furthermore, no candidate, however ideal, can be certain of acceptance to West Point without applying and being accepted. It has an acceptance rate of 9%. So his confidence in that is a little unseemly, as well as more than a little disrespectful to those who were accepted and did attend, and serve.

Shorter version: Even if he's never explicitly said that he applied, it wouldn't help him. What he did say would still be both false and inaccurate.

If what he meant was that he could have gotten a service nomination to West Point via ROTC, but chose not to pursue it because he wanted to be a doctor, he could have said so.

Being a physician and/or scientist lends a degree of crediblity to one's statements on medical/scientific matters outside one's field of expertise ONLY to the extent one uses understanding of the scientific method and critical thinking skills to analyze those matters.

It always amazes me how alties readily dismiss a vast array of educated, expert analysis that runs counter to their beliefs, yet worship at the altar of the "expert" credentials of a handful of people who agree with them.

"Ben Carson is a neurosurgeon, so he's gotta have the dope on all these other issues!"
"Suzanne Humphries is a nephrologist, so she knows all about vaccines!"

Nope. When you don't use your brains outside that one narrow area, you might as well be Mike Adams.

Carson claimed he was told people would arrange for him to "get a scholarship" at West Point. A spokesman for West Point points out there is no such thing as a scholarship to West Point.

Carson and his supporters say that sometime between May 23rd and 26th, 1969, he met with General William Westmoreland.
Army records show that General Westmoreland was not in Detroit during the time the claimed meeting occurred. He was there in February.
This, with his other lies, especially his blatant lies about never having a relationship with Mannatech, should be enough to trash him with his supporters. But, since they are tea baggers, like the resident troll sn, lies don't matter when they come from their people, only when they imagine others have told them.

As a physician who shares Orac's specialty, I also share his amazement and embarrassment that such people as Carson can have been so skilled (evidently) in his chosen field and so clueless in virtually everything else. Further, it's remarkable that of the many Republican physicians in Congress, virtually all are climate change deniers, rejecters of evolution, and, in the case of one, claimers that science is from the gates of hell.

I understand the connection between right-wing extremism and religious fundamentalism, but I have a hard time understanding how a physician can so fundamentally misunderstand what the scientific method is all about. I've concluded that one can get by in medicine, even to a fairly high level, with rote knowledge alone. I can memorize the Krebs cycle, for example, without either understanding or caring how it was discovered and confirmed.

You know, I was invited to apply to West Point on the basis of my PSAT scores in such flattering terms that it made admission seem all but guaranteed.

I don't know if colleges still even send letters like that. However, they did then. And that was the very first one I ever got, so I was thrilled I had someplace to go.

But do you see me going around saying I was offered a full scholarship to West Point? No, you do not.

And you know why? Because I've learned something about the world since I was 16.

Yet, the virtuous, wise, responsible and trustworthy Ben Carson is trying to lay all the blame for his blatantly false statement on the media. And his base is eating it up.

Always the victims, it's never their fault.

Sorry.

/off-topic.

Every time Carson opens his mouth, the wacky gets turned up a notch. The latest is his response to the question of whether someone with no experience in politics or knowledge of it's inner workings, is qualified to be president. Carson's replies were blatant defences of the Dunning-Kruger effect AND the omnipotence of surgeons.

On DK: "It is important to remember that amateurs built the Ark and it was the professionals that built the Titanic."

On surgeons: "Neurosurgery is considerably more complex than politics... They’re not even close in terms of the things that are required in order to be able to do them. You don’t need to know nearly as much to be able to maneuver in the political world as you do in the operating room inside of somebody’s brain. "

Pundit Jonathan Chait has tried to resolve Carson's apparent super-smart/super-dumb contradictions by positing he's brilliantly scamming the Teapers, having no desire to actually become President, but rather to establish his 'brand' as a richly-compensated conservative-media superstar (e.g. Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, Newt Gingrich...): "the most likely explanation for his behavior is that Carson himself is in this thing to make a lot of money." That's possible, I suppose, but I doubt it. Methinks Chait doesn't get the 'surgeon effect' thing.

Re: #47 --

I don't want to misspeak. It might have been an invitation to consider applying, technically. I just remember that it flattered me into thinking I'd get in.

You know, I was invited to apply to West Point on the basis of my PSAT scores in such flattering terms that it made admission seem all but guaranteed.

Yah, I recall at least a letter from Annapolis, but after I took the ASVAB, a number of recruiters came calling, so I don't know at this point whether there was anything more on that front.

@sadmar --

That he's got a business rather than a campaign manager is suggestive. But the fundraising is closer to telling. So while it's not 100% conclusive, I'm inclined to agree with Chait.

It's not an unprecedented thing. Ron Paul did it repeatedly. I mean, he was definitely building a political organization. But his campaign slogan practically could have been "I turned down the pension, now invest in my retirement." He wasn't really running for president.

Ann @47:
I got some letters like that (never form West Point) when I was applying to colleges. "Come pick your room!" Places I'd never even heard of, let alone applied to. It's very flattering when you're 17, but I wouldn't ever say that it means that I am a brilliant adult or professional.

@JustaTech --

As you say.

For one thing, there's a reason why West Point has a much higher drop-out rate than Yale. So even if he had been somehow been certain of acceptance, he still shouldn't be talking about it like it proves he has the right stuff.

Plus his stated reason for not going is somewhat less than rock-solid. Some graduates do go straight from West Point to medical school. So he could have been a doctor. He just avoided having to serve as one.

Don’t forget that Carson is a Seventh Day Adventist, and a devout one at that. Do some reading on that church and you’ll have a better idea of what a disconnect there is for any fundamentalist/doctor to live in both of those worlds.

Once anyone buys into fundamentalist religion (or any religion sometimes), they are capable of constructing almost any kind of belief system that hits their radar. They are taught to ignore what they hear in science class and just regurgitate the “lies” for the test.

Enjoyed very much the movie made of Carson's life a few years back. But seen in light of his political office bid, I see it for the slick propaganda piece that it really is.

JustaTech@52

I got some letters like that (never form West Point) when I was applying to colleges. “Come pick your room!”

I actually chose my school based on a phone call. They didn't promise a scholarship but said I would most likely get the highest academic scholarship they had, so that kind of thing isn't too far-fetched. What I actually cared about was that they didn't require an essay ;)

My brother and sister had the same experience with getting letters. Nothing to brag about, I think it's just what happens for anyone with good ACT or SAT scores.

The Carson campaign now has a 'rap' radio ad...
https://soundcloud.com/abcpolitics/ben-carson-radio-ad

The response on Twitter is pretty good:
https://twitter.com/hashtag/TweetYourReactionToTheBenCarsonRap?src=hash

The Carson case is trending in Canada. Incredibly, he continues to believe the great pyramids of Egypt were built by Joseph as graineries:

"My own personal theory is that Joseph built the pyramids to store grain," he told the audience. "Now all the archeologists think that they were made for the pharaohs' graves. But, you know, it would have to be something awfully big if you stop and think about it. And I don't think it'd just disappear over the course of time to store that much grain."

Like the founders of Andrews University, Carson is a Seventh-day Adventist. He also appears to favour a literalist view of the Book of Genesis, in which Joseph, one of Jacob's 12 sons, stores enough grain to feed Egypt during seven years of drought.

Carson said that the design of the pyramids is evidence they were intended to store grain for a long period of time, as Joseph may have done in the biblical story.

Asked by CBS News this week if he still believes the pyramids are ancient grain silos, he said, "It's still my belief, yes."

http://www.cbc.ca/news/trending/ben-carson-pyramids-for-grain-not-phara…

To ann #43:

“No school offers scholarships to students who haven’t applied."

Really?
So, when, for instance, multiple college recruiters descend upon the home of a high school football star offering him the “world”, including, of course, a “full ride”, they do so ONLY after the kid has duly completed applications to each of their schools, some of which he may never have heard of?

I’ll ask again, can anyone out there help me with something that’s in the news about Ben Carson – specifically, where it was that he ever stated that he had *actually applied* to West Point?

“Still yet furthermore, no candidate, however ideal, can be certain of acceptance to West Point without applying and being accepted. It has an acceptance rate of 9%.”

I think the acceptance rate would be a lot higher for the individuals who *West Point approaches*, as opposed to the individuals who approach WP.

“So his confidence in that is a little unseemly, as well as more than a little disrespectful to those who were accepted and did attend, and serve.”

So, Ben Carson now disrespects the military! Well done, ann.

“Shorter version: Even if he’s never explicitly said that he applied, it wouldn’t help him. What he did say would still be both false and inaccurate.”

Highly arguable that it was false and inaccurate. But speaking of false and inaccurate, can you or anyone out there direct me to the scathing ScienceBlog articles attacking Hillary Clinton’s many lies, including, off the top of my head:
-Her explanation for why she was named “Hillary” (hint: Think the guy who mounted Everest six years after Hillary was born.)
-Her brave landing under a hail of sniper fire in Bosnia in 1996 (Seems to be a hard thing to mis-remember, don’t you think?).

This here statement from a West Point spokesperson...

"I wouldn't find that odd, that a general would pursue a discussion to kind of talk to him and say, 'Do you know what West Point would offer you?' And if you're using general terminology to a 17-year-old, I could see how you would call them scholarships. We don't use that terminology, (but) I could see how that could occur," Brinkerhoff said.

...is the closest thing to an honest defense that can be made.

But as I said, if those are the terms, I'd be fully entitled to say "I was offered a full scholarship to West Point. I didn't refuse the scholarship outright, but that's because I was too busy lying around putting tiny art-deco appliques on my fingernails and listening.to Bootsy's Rubber Band."

Or words to that effect. And the reason I don't is that as an adult, I'm sufficiently oriented to reality and worldly wise to grasp that I was not (in fact) offered a full scholarship to West Point, as well as honest enough to care.

He can keep pitching you're-not-being-fair fits whenever it comes up. But that hardly makes him look more like a responsible grown-up. There is simply no way it's not a false, misleading and inaccurate statement. He was not offered a full scholarship to West Point.

I didn't see that SN had posted before I submitted that.

It's not a response to him. I'm not reading or replying to his comments.

Or this thread. Zero tolerance.

I actually chose my school based on a phone call.

When it came down to the last two of those which accepted me, I chose based on the conflicting recommendations of two English teachers.

The loser was the one who thought that The Lord of the Flies was really deep. The winner had us reading Antigone.

Given all the main stream media’s distortions and lies about the West Point thing, perhaps Ben Carson’s “trustworthiness” numbers will drop.
Before this week, I think Ben’s were at or near the top,
while Hillary Clinton’s were at the bottom.
In fact, I think Hillary was in negative territory, with a glaring 24-percentage point gap between those saying she’s NOT trustworthy/honest and those saying she is (i.e. 59% vs 35%).

Do any of you foresee Ben dropping to Hillary levels?

What a "nuanced" difference a couple hours can make.

Politico’s headline at 11:29 this morning:
“Ben Carson admits fabricating West Point scholarship”

Politico’s UPDATED headline at 5:32 this evening:
“Exclusive: Carson claimed West Point 'scholarship' but never applied”

I'm just suspending my flounce for long enough to add that he's given at least five different accounts of that time he went to stab a guy and broke the blade on his belt buckle.

In the three where he stabs his friend over a fight about radio stations, the differences are comparatively minor. But in the other two, he either stabs a stranger who was pestering him for racial and socioeconomic reasons, or a classmate who came up and started ridiculing him when he was minding his own business.

And that's just not the same story.

Needless to say, when questioned about this, Carson says:

Waaah! I know you are but what am I? Backsies!

Sorry. I meant: When questioned about this Carson says:

“Those claims are absolutely true,” Carson told Kelly of both the stabbing story and a separate incident in which he says he tried to hit his mother with a hammer. “This is simply an attempt to smear and to deflect the argument to something else. Something that we’ve seen many, many times before. I never used the true names of people in books, to protect the innocent. That’s something people have done for decades, for centuries.”

He added that he’d spoken to “Bob” today and “they were not anxious to be revealed. It was a close relative of mine. I didn’t want to put their lives under the spotlight.”

Which would make perfect sense if only (a) people who changed identifying details to protect the innocent didn't, out of integrity, disclose that they were doing so; and (b) it was necessary to conceal the identity of your close relative by turning him into a random stranger who was harassing you for racial and socioeconomic reasons.

As it is, not so much.

I'm now re-flouncing.

He can keep pitching you’re-not-being-fair fits whenever it comes up. But that hardly makes him look more like a responsible grown-up. There is simply no way it’s not a false, misleading and inaccurate statement. He was not offered a full scholarship to West Point.

Correct - especially when a spokesman from West Point has stated they don't offer scholarships.
Carson is simply used to never being questioned on his lies, because the people to whom he appeals don't care about them.
It isn't that this story is the first massive lie he's told, because 30 seconds of fact checking his other statements shows he's been telling whoppers for several years. It's caught attention because it involves the military. In a sane world it would be enough to damage him - but in a sane world his previous behavior would have prevented him from being considered a viable candidate.

See Noevo is kind of adorable, actually, mainly because he seems to think that a man with absolutely no tether to reality, no actual knowledge, and no experience will take the White House. I look forward to seeing Hilary (one L, btw) womp whichever Know Nothing moron people like SN think best represent them. The general election is there for a reason.

Regarding that whole email/private server thing with another candidate…

“… I have been advised that any breach of this Agreement may result in my termination of my access to [Sensitive Compartmented Information or SCI] and removal from a position of special confidence and trust requiring such access, as well as the termination of my employment or other relationships with any Department or Agency that provides me with access to SGI. In addition, I have been advised that any unauthorized disclosure of SGI by me may constitute violations of United States criminal laws, including…”
Signed,
Hillary R. Clinton, 1/22/09

http://freebeacon.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/HRC-SCI-NDA1.pdf

Whew! Thank goodness it didn’t say a breach would terminate her dreams of the presidency!

In France, Ben Carson's CV would require hard work, manual skills, a lot of energy, boldness, and the ability to manipulate people, but does not require intelligence, consistent with Palindrom's account. And politicians are better at manipulating people than at using their intelligence to address questions.

Re #66…

ann, archbishop of Flounce, has spoken.

To damien of Reality #68:

“I look forward to seeing Hilary (one L, btw)…”

In what reality is that one-L Hilary?

"You all should stop pointing out how Ben Carson lied because Hillary lied too!" See Noevo shouts at the spectators. "And besides! Where does he say 'Me, Ben Carson, actually applied to West Point" Nowhere! That's where! So his admission that he was misspoke means nothing! He's never lied! Never!"

Scott Adams has shown yet again that he should stay with his comics. He thinks Ben Carson will reverse global warming by converting America to vegetarianism: http://blog.dilbert.com/post/132667328016/the-upside-of-ben-carson. Sheesh!

From the Wall Street Journal:

In his 1990 autobiography, “Gifted Hands,” Mr. Carson writes of a Yale psychology professor who told Mr. Carson, then a junior, and the other students in the class—identified by Mr. Carson as Perceptions 301—that their final exam papers had “inadvertently burned,” requiring all 150 students to retake it. The new exam, Mr. Carson recalled in the book, was much tougher. All the students but Mr. Carson walked out.

“The professor came toward me. With her was a photographer for the Yale Daily News who paused and snapped my picture,” Mr. Carson wrote. “ ‘A hoax,’ the teacher said. ‘We wanted to see who was the most honest student in the class.’ ” Mr. Carson wrote that the professor handed him a $10 bill.

Then she took him to a magical land with tap-dancing penguins where they rode on a merry-go-round and ate ice cream.

She has since passed away and the photographer has been missing at sea for more than thirty years. So you'll just have to take Carson's word for that.

No photo identifying Mr. Carson as a student ever ran, according to the Yale Daily News archives, and no stories from that era mention a class called Perceptions 301. Yale Librarian Claryn Spies said Friday there was no psychology course by that name or class number during any of Mr. Carson’s years at Yale.

Yeah, but he just spoke to "Perceptions 301" today, and it was not anxious to be revealed.

Plus, it's difficult to see how such an incident would demonstrate honesty.to begin with. But never mind.

Damien @#68

HRC’s name definitely has TWO l’s.

Motivated reasoning is so attractive -- and so easy if you compartmentalize. Acquiring and developing intellectual virtues and applying them to every aspect of your life is quite another thing altogether.

I suspect that early on Carson made a simple error in his approach to learning that has grown into the weirdness we now see playing out on the national stage.

ann@75
I never knew his autobiography was titled "Gifted Hands". Talk about pompous.

Allow me to put on my Liberal/MSM/MSNBC tin foil hat…

Orac and ann and all these other white people here attacking black Ben Carson.
Obviously, racism is at play.

Thank you, SN, and thank you DL, for correcting me. My beliefs were demonstrably wrong, and now, having been shown the error of my ways, I will conform my beliefs to what the evidence shows.

SN, you care to join me? Or are you still preeeeeetty sure that Ben Carson was offered a scholarship to a school that doesn't offer scholarships by a man who wasn't even in his state at the time?

To Damien #80:

No, I won’t join you.
A “scholarship” is just a word for a college or college sponsor providing a student partial or full tuition coverage.
Prior to this week, if you had asked me whether West Point provided scholarships, I probably would have said ‘I think so. Why not?’ As would the great majority of Americans, I think.

The fact that WP doesn’t actually provide “scholarships”, but rather provides “appointments”, doesn’t take away from the fact that the appointment is a “free ride”, just like a scholarship.

And if you have a perfect memory of the conversations, events, and timing of things that happened nearly 50 years ago, congratulations. Maybe YOU should run for president. Or for God.

Are you preeeeeetty sure that 2-L Hillary wasn’t lying/fabricating about landing under a hail of sniper fire in Bosnia in 1996? Seems to be a hard thing to mis-remember, don’t you think?

Sn, the only thing that can be said about you is that not only is your own ability to tell a lie amazing, your ability to lie about the lies other creationists say is amazing.

No intelligent person would conflate the operating model for West Point with a scholarship. You are pathetic.

That's wringer not ringer. You might want to change that. God help us, it'll be tow the line next. :-)

To BobM #83:

An innocent mistake by Orac, I’m sure.

But it’s somewhat emblematic of a consistent trait of liberals: Lack of attention to detail. Or more precisely, deliberate disregard of detail that damages their dogmatic tales (e.g. on biological evolution, cosmological evolution, socialism).

Oh, occasionally some of the more ethical ones will fess up, when it’s unavoidable (e.g. http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2015/11/03/leading-theory-for-h…)

But usually not.

capnkrunch @78 ---

I never knew his autobiography was titled “Gifted Hands”. Talk about pompous.

HIs hands apparently were extraordinarily skillful. His head, eh, maybe not so much.

It's pretty stunning that he was able to stand there at that press conference accusing the press of not asking why Obama's college records are sealed and righteously demanding that they tell him where the equivalence is when the answer to that is:

The equivalence is that we're also not asking why your college records are sealed, the reason for that being that everybody's are.

In short: He still lashes out when he gets angry, but not with hammers.

palindrom@58

HIs hands apparently were extraordinarily skillful. His head, eh, maybe not so much.

I don't doubt that, I just think it's rather narcissistic to go around calling yourself gifted. On second thought though, I think it's possible the editor or someone comes up with the title. But, it does fit it with the whole 'when everyone tells you you're this sh!t you start to believe it' idea.

Did you hear me say anything remotely defensive of HilLary Clinton? She lied about that for no reason, and it was reasonable to hammer her for it....eight friggin years ago. please tell me if I'm wrong, but Ben Carson's lies, stupidity and borderline mentally ill pronouncements have nothing whatsoever to do with Hillary Clinton's lies, whatever they may be.

I'm not thrilled with her, by any stretch, but at least she's not going to be making policy based off the latest insanity from the voices in her head.

I don't know if you can understand this, but this lie about his "scholarship offer" from Gen. Westmoreland, and the other fabrications, aren't disqualifying on their own. It's his tenuous-at-best grasp of what qualifies as knowledge vs. what's delusion.

I think what you've missed is that while the stupid party has been galvanizing two demented amateurs for their standard-bearers, Democrats are at least fielding two if not three professional, capable candidates who will absolutely demolish the Republicans.

If you don't see that, then I suppose it's not merely Dr. Carson who needs a new tether to earth.

I don’t know if you can understand this, but this lie about his “scholarship offer” from Gen. Westmoreland, and the other fabrications, aren’t disqualifying on their own. It’s his tenuous-at-best grasp of what qualifies as knowledge vs. what’s delusion.

To me, the really serious problem is that he's insisting his informal association with West Point isn't an exaggeration (because media smear) but that his informal association with Mannatech is (because media smear).

It's also complete lunacy to claim that Obama and/or Hillary and/or anybody running for president isn't subjected to the same degree of scrutiny. The only difference is that most presidential candidates have a history of running for elected office and have been raked over the coals already.

They also usually have professionals vetting them in advance.

The real anomaly is Donald Trump. He can get away with anything, evidently. But he's practically never done anything except say whatever completely untrue thing crosses his mind. I think people are probably just overwhelmed.

It's also not great that he's completely unprepared for totally predictable challenges in an adversarial situation.

Given the job requirements of the presidency.

but Ben Carson’s lies, stupidity and borderline mentally ill pronouncements have nothing whatsoever to do with Hillary Clinton’s lies, whatever they may be.

I’m not thrilled with her, by any stretch, but at least she’s not going to be making policy based off the latest insanity from the voices in her head.

Didn't we just talk about this kind of thing?

On second thought though, I think it’s possible the editor or someone comes up with the title.

Sure; books publishing has a number of steps from acquisitions to production. But nobody's able to force a title on an author (and Gifted Hands was ghostwritten by Cecil Murphey in any event).

Just imagine what the subtitle might have been if it were Skyhorse.

Prior to this week, if you had asked me whether West Point provided scholarships, I probably would have said ‘I think so. Why not?’ As would the great majority of Americans, I think.

I'm not quite seeing how Carson is exonerated by the plausibility of his fabrication, or the number of people it would have fooled.

Prior to this week, if you had asked me whether West Point provided scholarships, I probably would have said ‘I think so. Why not?’ As would the great majority of Americans, I think.

I’m not quite seeing how Carson is exonerated by the plausibility of his fabrication, or the number of people it would have fooled.

This is spectacularly brain-dead even for S.N. What part of going to West Point is joining the Army is likely to be unrecognized by "the great majority of Americans"?

To Damien #88:

“Did you hear me say anything remotely defensive of HilLary Clinton? She lied about that for no reason, and it was reasonable to hammer her for it….eight friggin years ago. please tell me if I’m wrong, but Ben Carson’s lies, stupidity and borderline mentally ill pronouncements have nothing whatsoever to do with Hillary Clinton’s lies, whatever they may be.”

So, while you acknowledge Hillary lies, and lies while in a position of governmental power, you don’t have a problem with the lying, but rather have a problem with this stupidity and borderline mental illness, which you allege Ben suffers from.

What might be a policy decision of Ben as president which would be impacted by his “stupid/mentally-ill” views on pyramids, evolution, etc.?

Haven’t read the body of her latest posts yet, but I see that
ann, archbishop of Flounce, is re-flouncing with a vengeance.

ann of a thousand words, but not ann of her word.

It is a little amusing to see the defenders of carson, including the local completely inept troll sn, flail around in their attempts to change the subject to anything else: claims that other candidates haven't been put to the same scrutiny, or that the fact that a post about Carson's repeated blatantly false stories doesn't include equally scathing comments about (fill in the blank) means that the people discussing Carson must support (fill in the blank).

There is a very simple way around having the Republican candidates called on their repeated lies: select candidates who don't lie, whether it is about science, history, or their own personal history, as Carson has been doing.

As far as the blatantly stupid comment @95 goes: the point, which I will assume you aren't capable of understanding, isn't that Carson is so willing to lie about things that are so easily checked (because, in the right wing world, fact-checking is something that shouldn't be done), it is because on those rare times when he has been asked serious questions, he shows himself to be so out of touch with the topic he can't even dance around them gracefully. The thought of a person with no knowledge of international relations, or, it seems, the Constitution, having access to the presidency, should be concerning to everyone. (It isn't to you because you are even less knowledgeable than Carson.)

In #75, ann of Flounce fame quotes from the WSJ:

“The professor came toward me. With her was a photographer for the Yale Daily News who paused and snapped my picture,” Mr. Carson wrote….
No photo identifying Mr. Carson as a student ever ran, according to the Yale Daily News archives, and no stories from that era mention a class called Perceptions 301. Yale Librarian Claryn Spies said Friday there was no psychology course by that name or class number during any of Mr. Carson’s years at Yale.”

Questions I have for the WSJ:
-As a general rule, does every picture taken by a paper’s photographers appear in the paper?
- Might the class have been called something remotely *similar to* Perception 301?
-Did they try to locate the names of the psych professors Carson had and see what the names of the courses were which they taught? If the profs are still alive, did they try to locate and question them?
-Do you believe current absence of evidence of something is proof the something didn’t happen?
- Do you really consider this story anything more than a hack job worthy of People magazine?

Questions I have for the WSJ

Perhaps you should pose your questions to them rather than ass-spraying them here.

To capnkrunch #87:

“I don’t doubt that, I just think it’s rather narcissistic to go around calling yourself gifted.”

That Ben Carson was highly accomplished as a surgeon, on a world-renowned-type of scale, is unarguable.

For him to call himself “gifted” is more an act of humility, for he’s saying his indisputable medical skill was not completely of his own making but rather a gift (i.e. gift from God).

Conversely, that Barack Hussein Obama is highly accomplished as a president of the U.S. is most certainly arguable.
Do you doubt that it’s rather narcissistic for Barack to essentially call himself perhaps the greatest president in the last 150 years?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhJNJgjpuWk

I’ll ask again, can anyone out there help me with something that’s in the news about Ben Carson – specifically, where it was that he ever stated that he had *actually applied* to West Point?

I'm not sure whether this "reasoning" from S.N. is novel or just trending (emphasis added):

"And the Church does not hold that the earth is NOT 6000 years old.
There are many like me. But among today's billion or so self-identified Catholics, we're a relatively rare breed. A hundred years ago, a thousand years ago, we would have been the status quo."

To herr doktor bimler #93:

Me: “Prior to this week, if you had asked me whether West Point provided scholarships, I probably would have said ‘I think so. Why not?’ As would the great majority of Americans, I think.”

You: “I’m not quite seeing how Carson is exonerated by the plausibility of his fabrication, or the number of people it would have fooled.”

And I’m not quite seeing how Carson in any way fabricated anything about West Point, and I’m not seeing how he was trying to fool anyone.
The plausibility of his account is high. I wouldn’t be surprised if Carson, like me and many others, didn’t know, before the last week, that West Point didn’t provided “scholarships”, per se.

Ben Carson (and I) thanks all of you, and the media you swallow. It’s been a good week.
Cha-ching.

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/gop-primaries/259469-carson-thanks-…

To ann, archbishop of Flounce:

I’m taking the liberty of trying on the mentality of your mitre, and…
EPIPHANY! : If I am a misogynist, as you have claimed, then you have demonstrated here you are a racist.
..................
You can have your hat back now.

The plausibility of his account is high. I wouldn’t be surprised if Carson, like me and many others, didn’t know, before the last week, that West Point didn’t provided “scholarships”, per se.

Yah. I'm sure everyone will be fascinated in what you learned about career paths in the military during your time as an ROTC star.

His hands apparently were extraordinarily skillful. His head, eh, maybe not so much.

Not really relevant, but this reminds me of a joke I heard between 2 surgeons who got on an elevator with me back when I worked in the OR. One of them stuck his foot in the door to keep it from closing, and the other said "you can always tell the surgeons because they always stop the door with their feet, not their hands." To which the first surgeon responded, "Except for the orthopedic surgeons - they just stick their head in the door."

At the end of the day, SN, Ben Carson is a brilliant surgeon with a well-deserved international reputation in that arena.

But Hillary Clinton actually has helped shape policy, to instigate world-wide betterments, and she has been part of two hugely successful presidencies. She knows the people, the mechanisms, and the processes for getting things done in both congress and the White House. Ben Carson can barely handle the science that drives biology, let alone the complex international relationships that he would have to navigate, and given his clear inability to learn (wet-foot dry-foot, anybody? When you're speaking to a Cuban-dominant audience?), marks him unworthy of holding the office.

The man can take in a billion dollars from the ignorant, and you can attack Hillary for whatever you want, but at the end of the day, Ben Carson will fail, and you can gnash your teeth and tend your garments as the adults deal with things. I'd pat you on the head to make this even more patronizing, but I think the fact you're backing a guy who couldn't tell you the difference between the sixth amendment and the sixth fleet is just adorable enough on its own.

Yeah. My understanding is that orthopods are not known as the intellectuals of the surgical world.

Though I have to love my orthopod many years ago who showed me the X-ray of my broken collarbone, with the ghostly shadow of a calcifying bridge starting to join the widely-separated ends -- "God, I love bone!" she said.

I think she was in the right specialty.

"By Civ IV, it changes to grant knowledge of all forms of government and the ability to swap from one to another without penalty."

Rich Woods - this was the ability it had in Civ1 as well (and I remember that, which must mean I'm old). The argument made for changing it for Civ II was that it was too powerful that way, and I agree. (Although why anyone would want to switch from monarchy until they have a decently sized empire is beyond me, but that's another story.)

The plausibility of his account is high. I wouldn’t be surprised if Carson, like me and many others, didn’t know, before the last week, that West Point didn’t provided “scholarships”, per se.

We seem to be back with the idea that although Carson's account of events is impossible, it is nevertheless superficially plausible so he might have convinced himself that it did happen. That is, "It's not a lie if you believe it yourself".

Personally I do not choose national leaders on their capacity for self-deception. But the career (or rather, the careers) of Reagan suggest that Americans rate that capacity more highly. Fortunately it is not my election and I'm just here to point and laugh.

@ Herr Doktor
The capacity for self-deception is needed for deceiving others. Most leaders have this capacity.
http://researchers.uq.edu.au/research-project/14025

To herr doktor bimler #109:

“…although Carson’s account of events is impossible…”

Ridiculous. Are you on drugs, dok?

“Fortunately it is not my election and I’m just here to point and laugh.”

Don’t despair, dok. Here in America even dead people vote, usually in Democrat precincts.
So, even if you’re, say, a German citizen, I’m sure Hillary’s campaign can figure out a way to record your vote here in 2016. Sieg Hill!

“God, I love bone!” she said
This sounds familiar from a Ray Bradbury story.

The creep keeps writing stuff more ridiculous that what I could ever come up with...

But seems it is determined to provide enough material for a full sequel. Maybe next week, once this weekend's time festivities are over.

weekend's time consuming festivities, that is.

gaist, I was wondering about what that meant: here in the US of A, the time festivities werwe last weekend.

Poo, I fat-fingered "were", didn't I. Keep the extra 'w' for whatever use it might have for you.

Carson, and sn, behave like 5 year old children when called on their lies: "I wouldn't have to lie if you didn't ask about the truth."

Orthopod jokes!
What's the difference between an orthopedic surgeon and a carpenter?
A carpenter knows more than one antibiotic!

Another orthopod joke which TBruce might appreciate:

How many neutrophils does it take on frozen section to establish whether joint tissue is infected?

(there's no punch line, but it's a joke anyway)

The orthopod jokes have convinced me I should continue to delay having knee replacement surgery.

It is a little amusing to see the defenders of carson, including the local completely inept troll sn, flail around in their attempts to change the subject to anything else: claims that other candidates haven’t been put to the same scrutiny, or that the fact that a post about Carson’s repeated blatantly false stories doesn’t include equally scathing comments about (fill in the blank) means that the people discussing Carson must support (fill in the blank).

They deflect and smear, in other words.

I really don't know why they didn't also have proxies ready to go, so they could give a friendly news outlet the phone number of someone who knew him growing up that was willing to say, "He had a violent temper, I saw it myself." Or what-have-you.

I mean, that's probably not possible in every case. But some of those anecdotes ("Perceptions 301"; his bad temper; his actions during the MLK riots) would not be all that much work to corroborate, with his cooperation.

They're going to have to it eventually anyway, assuming it can be done. Because by itself, the "How dare you question my character?/It's a secular progressive plot" approach to campaigning does not win undecided hearts and minds. And the support of 29% of Republican voters is not enough to give him a lock on the nomination. Let alone the presidency.

That assumes he's actually trying to win, though. If he's just running as a way of getting fools to part with enough money to establish himself as a national political brand, he's doing great..

To Damien #107:

“But Hillary Clinton actually has helped shape policy, to instigate world-wide betterments, and she has been part of two hugely successful presidencies. She knows the people, the mechanisms, and the processes for getting things done…”

You forgot ‘she’s flown millions of miles as Sec. of State’.

You should consider joining her campaign, specifically, to help Hill develop some rational, convincing rat-a-tat-tat bullet points of her actual accomplishments.
Because she struggles with this so.
And evuh budy know. It be a runnin’ joke.

“It was a simple question to someone accustomed to much tougher ones: What was her proudest achievement as secretary of state? But for a moment, Hillary Rodham Clinton, appearing recently before a friendly audience at a women’s forum in Manhattan, seemed flustered…
But her halting answer suggests a problem that Mrs. Clinton could confront as she recounts her record in Mr. Obama’s cabinet before a possible run for president in 2016: Much of what she labored over so conscientiously is either unfinished business or has gone awry in his second term.

"From Russia’s aggression in Ukraine and the grinding civil war in Syria to the latest impasse in the Middle East peace process, the turbulent world has frustrated Mr. Obama, and is now defying Mrs. Clinton’s attempts to articulate a tangible diplomatic legacy…”
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/17/us/politics/unfinished-business-compl…

When looking to her past, all you see is… bad baggage.
(You can start at page 1 and work forward, or page 16 and work backwards.)
http://conservativeamerican.org/the-hillary-clinton-lies-list/

(there’s no punch line, but it’s a joke anyway)

No. Freakin'. Kidding.

As someone who did apply for an appointment to West Point (but did not attend) I have concluded:
- Is it possible that someone did offer Ben Carson a scholarship to West Point? It seems unlikely.
- Is it possible the people in the army did suggest he should consider attending West Point, pointing out that there would be no tuition and fees as well as other benefits? Absolutely.
- Is it possible that 17 year old would interpret a general recruiting message of that sort as "I was offered a full scholarship to West Point"? Absolutely, though as an adult writing his autobiography I'd like to think he'd have thought through what really happened and worded it more precisely.

IMHO, though, this incident is a performance of Shakespeare in a device used to serve hot liquids.

Gee - all of these grsat intellectuals and self congratulatory academics here and all using a quickly debunked Politico story as "evidence" that Carson is a serial liar and unfit to be the President. I am agnostic and believe that I will never be able to prove or disprove the lack of a higher being simply because the sheer number of people who DO believe IS a foundation of "evidence" when it relates to historical evidence. Atheists attack with the same venom and lack of perspective that they accuse the fundamentalists of.

I ntlligence and "smarts" are generally accepted as different. I know many, wildly intelligent individuals that struggle to fit in to society or channel that intelligence into a productive endeavor. I have engineering degrees and business degrees. I grew up in a devout Catholic family and knew ew at a relatively early age thaI didnt have "faith". I have siblings with similar degrees and education and working in scientific fields that are still very grounded in their faith and use it effectively as a moral guide. What is wrong with that?

I am labeled a "science denier" because I think man's impact on the environment is somewhat trivial due to the sheer amount of "pollution" caused by volcanoes alone every year. I also believe sabotaging our economy or picking winners and losers in the energy sector is silly and even if the US goes to ZERO carbon based impact - it will have less than a trivial effect compared to aggressively growing, far less sophisticated economies such as China or India (woth respect to pollution). Does that mean we should rape and pillage with wreckless abandon...? No. But the solution has to be economical and sustainable or the result will be a collapse and a far more aggressive polluting populace.

Do I agree with everything Carson says? Absolutely not. Do I believe he is grounded, principled, and respects his talents and the opportunities that put him in the place to run for POTUS...? Absolutely. All the hand wringing, slander, baseless attacks, and condescending BS won't change the way the majority see him. This guy disrupted his entire life/retirement and ran because he was asked to serve. Hewas and is still a very reluctant candidate. That was what the founding fathers envisioned. Serve your country and go back home.

As far as those assuming "Gifted HAnds" is sheer arrogance - the gift he is referring to comes from God. The gift to overcome, the gift to change, the gift to excel, the gifts of opportunity, the gift to serve, etc. He believes he was bestowed upon with many gifts and that faith allowed him to recognize and seize those opportunities accordingly. Is that reall such a bad message especially compared to the welfare/nanny state where whole cultures have become systematically dependent on the system and see no way to break the cycle (except for more money for edcuation, more opportunity, etc)? Opportunity exists everywhere and those from better backgrounds certainly have more. But I have seen few people throughout my years that have ever been exceptional when it comes to seizing opportunity and taking risks.

Fnally - where is the barometer when compared to Obama? Long time member of a Church whose pastor routinely blasts America and his despise of it; a wife who was embarrassed and ashamed to be an American until her husband was elected; a mediocre student it seems at best despite the opportunities that were presented to him, NO track record of accomplishment in the private or public sector prior to running for President; his only "job" was a community organizer and his time in the Senate is punctuated by a no vote for Iraq (which the current progressive front runner cant even claim) ?

I was also told I could get a full ride at West Point a long time ago. A classmate a year ahead of me got the appointment and the same sponsor spoke with me personally and since I was from a very low income family - he stressed the economic impact of having that full ride. I havent though about this for 25 years or more but if someone had asked - I porbably would have described it as being a full ride or full scholarship. It is semantics. The same individual who morivided the appointment for the guy ahead of me was speaking to me I never applied as I wanted a different direction but certainly woukd have described it as such. I had the test scores, was the valedictorian, athlete (not quite D1) and had a strong servie and work background. I never had a violent past but I also never grew up in that environment where violence was a common resort (and worse today -Detroit is a festering shithole).

I just find it unfortunately remarkable that so many "intelligent" men and women on here are so closed minded and willing to accept "proof" that the guy is not worthy while accusing his supporters of the exact same thing. The irony is not lost nor will it be truly examined by most on here. Worse, he is being crucified for these "lies" when the current President and liberal front runner have a long running history of blatant lies that are well documented (and not semantics or creative quoting) that had REAL impact on everyday Americans . You have managed yourself to be Grubered right along with the "dumb" and low information voters you so clearly desoise and hold contempt for.

Too much typing on a small phone to continue. Also a waste of time due to the effect so eloquently described prior of allowing bias effect change.

I dont expect him to win the nomination but I will take his resume, demeanor, beliefs, and even those I think are in left field due to his convictions than another Clinton whose contempt for the commoners cant even be disgusied by her handlers or the MSM

But Hillary Clinton actually has helped shape policy, to instigate world-wide betterments, and she has been part of two hugely successful presidencies.

Well....I don't know about the worldwide betterments or two hugely successful presidencies. It's true that Carson can't make those claims in a general election and that Hillary can, though.

The thing is that in order to get to the general election, a candidate has to be able to win primaries in blue states as well as red states, which becomes a handicap and not a strength the second they're nominated.

So maybe Rubio, I guess. But who knows?

Whoever runs, I think the real problem for the GOP vis-a-vis Hillary is that unless they have something truly lethal in reserve, they're already into the zone where continued attacks will just help her and hurt the attacker. I mean, that Benghazi hearing was a gift.

So they need a strong candidate. And that's their other real problem.

Pyramid granaries make perfect sense to me. You need to make it smaller on top than at bottom so it's easier to fill. And who wouldn't sheathe a granary in marble? If we had done it with all those vacant grain elevators they wouldn't be eyesores. An opening at the base for filling, and more important removing, is de rigeur. It keeps more people employed, and if you need the grain dragging it through the narrow corridors of a maze prevents mad scrambles for everyone to get their share. Of course to protect that grain you also need to have blind passages and seal up some empty chambers.
But most of all, you have no style if you don't put in a dead pharaoh and a big pile of treasure to guard it all, because that will keep all those grain robbers out.

The simple truth about the service academies is the cadets don't pay for anything - tuition, books, housing, uniforms, meals, you name it. Everyone gets a "free ride" except dropouts, who have to pay back by serving in an enlisted rank for some number of years.
If we did otherwise we'd have a military like 19th Century Britain, divided between officers nearly entirely from wealthy families (and usually a second or later son) and "other ranks", who were recruited from the poorest, most desperate, or most gullible. Officers, especially engineering officers, who rose on ability alone were always reminded that they were social inferiors to the other officers.

To Mephistopheles O’Brien #125:

“Is it possible that someone did offer Ben Carson a scholarship to West Point? It seems unlikely.”

Right. Even though Ben was the top ROTC student in Detroit, with grades good enough to be accepted at Yale, and a hot enough prospect to West Point that Westmoreland and other WP reps met personally with Ben.

P.S.
Sorry to hear you were rejected by West Point.

IMHO, though, this incident is a performance of Shakespeare in a device used to serve hot liquids.

Pretty much any one incident is, by itself. It's more that he can't take the heat. "Thin-skinned" and "quick to anger" just don't win elections

Plus, this pattern actually started back with that stick-up-robbery-at-Popeye's anecdote that police don't have any record of. Not that you can really convict anybody based on the word of the Baltimore police.*** But even still. After a while, it starts to add up.

***Figuratively speaking.

To Chris Wahl #126:

Great post. Thank you.

I am labeled a “science denier” because I think man’s impact on the environment is somewhat trivial due to the sheer amount of “pollution” caused by volcanoes alone every year.

The USGS thinks otherwise. They estimate that fossil fuel use releases 100x the carbon dioxide that volcanoes do annually.

sn, Westmoreland did not meet with Carson - Westmoreland was nowhere near Detroit when Carson says they met. You are as much a liar as Carson, but we already knew that.

In #127, ann the inveterate re-flouncer writes

“Whoever runs, I think the real problem for the GOP vis-a-vis Hillary is that unless they have something truly lethal in reserve, they’re already into the zone where continued attacks will just help her and hurt the attacker. I mean, that Benghazi hearing was a gift.”

Oh, the Benghazi hearing was a gift to willfully deaf dumb and blind liberals, considering the main stream media’s colorful wrapping and pretty bow (i.e. Hill handled herself so well. So cool, and presidential. Not an awful hairdo, either!’).

It was a gift to ann and the others here who don’t unwrap the gift.
Because if they DID, and looked at what’s inside, at the substance, they would have seen that it was at that Benghazi hearing that proof was given that Hillary had LIED about the youtube video causing the attack. Proof she LIED to the American people and LIED to the families of the fallen. But not to Chelsea on the night of the attack. And not to Prime Minister of Egypt the next day.

Ah, nothing lethal.

This woman shouldn’t be running for president. The bitch should be behind bars. #69 redux:

I am labeled a “science denier” because I think man’s impact on the environment is somewhat trivial due to the sheer amount of “pollution” caused by volcanoes alone every year.

Yes, exactly so. The reason is because science disagrees with what you think. It's not even close. You are denying the scientific consensus; so you are a science denier.

ann, the ammo provider, in #131:
“Plus, this PATTERN actually started back with … After a while, it starts to add up.”

Yes, it does add up. How many of the 16 pages did you get through? http://conservativeamerican.org/the-hillary-clinton-lies-list/

The bitch should be behind bars.

Classic.

Fnally – where is the barometer when compared to Obama?

Compared to not only Obama but also every other successful candidate for president from either party for the last forty-plus years, Carson's barely been scrutinized or attacked at all.

It just seems worse because he handles it so poorly.

Classic.

In more ways than one.

Objectively speaking, that hearing helped her. Having tantrums about it is not going to change anything, except for the worse.

You'd think they'd never tried viciously attacking a Clinton before. But some people never learn. Too emotional, I guess.

Eleven incredible minutes of video. What a gift.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/425933/benghazi-committee-emails-…

Note well time 5:10 (email to Chelsea), and time 5:48 (call to Egyptian prime minister).

But her hair looks OK.

Just for you, SN:

http://www.mediaite.com/online/sht-ben-carson-says-the-complete-collect…

sn, you keep claiming crimes committed by Hilary, but nothing actionable has turned up in the hearings. If the evidence were as overwhelming as you (and your fellow mouthbreathers) claim, do you think there would be the resounding legal silence there actually is? (Of course you do, because of some asinine conspiracy you dream up but which also doesn't exist in the real world.)
If you would deal with facts you could find many things to be unhappy with about her, as many of us do. Your substanceless accusations, and links to right-wing conspiracy sites, are worthless. Just like everything else you say.

Further to #142:

http://www.fark.com/comments/8920647/Shiat-my-Ben-Carson-says

Why is it that me not liking Carson means I automagically support Clinton? Why is the best response to Carson's lies is "but Hillary's are worse"? Why is Ben Carson referred to as 'Carson" and Hillary Clinton as "Hillary"? Inquiring minds want to know.

Ben Carson is a liar and an idiot and whatever Hillary Clinton is has no bearing on that whatsoever.

@Chris Wahl
For an agnostic you sure sound quite churchy. In any other environment calling yourself gifted is an act of arrogance, not humility. Think of it this way. It reads much more like " I am God's gift to the Earth" than "thank God for providing me a skill for helping others".

This is all subjective of course. But since you seem to be unable to evaluate people other than by comparing them to Democrats, consider the title of Obama's autobiography Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance. See, it is possible to title an autobiography without praising yourself. Who knew?

On second thought allow me to correct myself. That's very Republican of Chris Wahl, not churchy. Unless you're apologizing for someone, I think even religious people would agree that referring to yourself as "gifted" is rather pompous.

What's up with See Noevo's assumption that Orac has no African American readers? Part of me wants to say that's a somewhat racist assumption itself but rational me say "nope, See Noevo is just and idiot".

Dean... remember, he/she is still waiting for the head of Planned Parenthood to be indicted.

"...churchy..."

Republican = Church of Our Lord Reagan and Faith-Based Systemics

remind me not to go to you as a surgeon - or the other person that posted MD by their name. You clearly do not believe in evidence based research (the westpoint thing) - and I certainly would not want you operating on me.

Secondly, why do you criticize one's religion? I am not a religious person - but who really cares what he believes about pyramids. All I care about is someone that can add 2 + 2 and get 4. I think he is the only candidate that will be able to do so.

Remember that this is the same See Neovo that once said:

Are you saying NO ONE apart from Jesus Christ has authority to say definitively what Christianity is, and even authority to decide what proper Christian behavior is?

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2015/05/20/why-do-doctors-deny-evolut…

That's how arrogant he is: He can't admit that he's below his own God!

Jill: The problem is that when Ben Carson adds two and two, the result he gives is whatever he thinks will get him elected.

Secondly, why do you criticize one’s religion? I am not a religious person – but who really cares what he believes about pyramids

I am wondering to whom Jill's question is directed, and where she is seeing the atheistic agenda. Certainly not the original post, which mentions religion approximately nowhere.

I wonder how much Hillary will try to distinguish herself, even distance herself, from her former boss Barack - one of the greatest presidents in the last 150 years, in his view (ref: #100 above).
[I’d argue he’s by far the worst.]
Barack certainly doesn’t seem so great at least from the standpoint of strengthening his political party.
Under his leadership Democrats have lost about 910 state legislature seats, 12 governorships, 69 House seats, and 13 Senate seats.

"but who really cares what he believes about pyramids"
I do. I don't want as president someone who has no understanding of science, a complete disregard for overwhelming evidence elucidated by hundreds and thousands of scientists who have devoted many years and much effort, who rejects basic biology, and thinks that all of geology and history and cosmology took place in the last 6000 years, before which there was nothing.
I don't want him to have any say over scientific research priorities, conservation, global warming remediation, national defence, you name it and his beliefs come up short.

@Orac "Yes, exactly so. The reason is because science disagrees with what you think. It’s not even close. You are denying the scientific consensus; so you are a science denier."

Im ok with that label. Im not ok with specifically pulled data, assumptions made based on favorable subsets, gross extrapolation, ignoring certain cycles in favor of others, etc. The money can be followed on both signs. The same science alarmists were also predicting we would be in a horrendous ice age in the early 2000's (now) back in the 79's and 80's (once can still find the article via Newsweek). It went from an impending free, to global warming, and now just the ubiquitous "climate change."

When you all get done patting yourselves on the back for how smart you are, please figure out how yoh make the entire world succumb to the same stifling regs on energy as proposed and being enacted in the US. We wail and they laugh.

@ Chris Wahl:
You might be interested in reading this article from Wikipedia*:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling
It's pretty clear that Global Cooling and fears of a coming ice age were never predicted by more than a small minority of scientists. Interestingly, Global Warming (= Climate Change) is denied by no more than a small minority of scientists today.

* BTW, why is Wikipedia often written as W___pedia?

ignoring certain cycles in favor of others, etc. The money can be followed on both signs. The same science alarmists were also predicting we would be in a horrendous ice age in the early 2000’s (now) back in the 79’s and 80’s (once can still find the article via Newsweek).

You're really not very good at this, and I strongly suspect that nobody's interested in yet another AGW crank.

@Chris Wahl:

Im ok with that label. Im not ok with specifically pulled data, assumptions made based on favorable subsets, gross extrapolation, ignoring certain cycles in favor of others, etc.

Then why do you disbelieve that humans are causing Global Warming to a potentially catastrophic degree? It is the deniers who are, in your words, "favorable subsets, gross extrapolation, ignoring certain cycles in favor of others, etc."

The money can be followed on both signs.

I assume you mean "sides". And you're wrong. The denialists are massively funded by fossil fuel interests. Who funds the scientists who overwhelmingly agree with Anthropogenic Global Warming?

From today’s NBC’s “Meet the Press”:
When asked if the scrutiny of Ben Carson is OK, Dem Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders said

“I think it might be a better — idea I know it’s a crazy idea — but maybe we focus on the issues impacting the American people and what candidates are saying rather than just spending so much time exploring their lives 30 or 40 years ago. I think the reason so many people are turned off to the political process has to do with the fact we’re not talking about real issues impacting real people.”

Why is Ben Carson referred to as ‘Carson” and Hillary Clinton as “Hillary”?.

Because of ex-President Bill.

To TBruce #156:

“* BTW, why is Wikipedia often written as W___pedia?”

I don’t know for sure.
Maybe because they feel they’re not allowed to write W_holelotofbiasedliberalbullsh*t_pedia.

I’ve always detected a liberal slant to wiki articles that are on subjects that are even remotely political/philosophical/religious (e.g. evolution “science”, global warming “science”, Planned Parenthood). I see similar slants with Snopes.
Obviously written by liberals.

And I seem to recall seeing more stuff lately about tendentious editing issues at wiki. I’ll be using wiki much less in the future, and certainly wouldn't rely on it for their “Global_cooling” piece.

And the hits just keep coming.

Ben Carson has now posted a clip from the Yale Daily News describing a student prank announcement that a series of Psychology 10 exams had been destroyed, which caused "several" students to show up and take a test for no reason, along with a note saying:

On Saturday a reporter with the Wall Street Journal published a story that my account of being the victim of a hoax at Yale where students were led to believe the exams they had just taken were destroyed and we needed to retake the exam was false. The reporter claimed that no evidence existed to back up my story. Even went so far as to say the class didn't exist.

Well here is the student newspaper account of the incident that occurred on January 14, 1970.

Will an apology be coming. I doubt it.

Considering that the class didn't exist and that the incident described doesn't include 150 students walking out, leaving Carson to be photographed and rewarded by the professor with a ten-dollar bill for being the most honest, I kind of doubt that too.

If anything, it actually makes him look like he fell for a hoax in 1970 and still hasn't managed to reconcile himself to it yet.

But maybe he just read about it and decided it would be a better story if it was little bit more about the splendor of Ben Carson.

Either way, wow. He's really not all there.

ann: "But what was the sphinx for?"

Condiments

Thanks for nothing, SN.

Jill wrote: "Secondly, why do you criticize one’s religion? I am not a religious person – but who really cares what he believes about pyramids."

Because he says this belief is Biblical, but the Bible says nothing about the pyramids being grain stores. And having been inside of the pyramids, we *know* they aren't grain stores. There'd be no rational reason to build gigantic pyramids with only a tiny amount of storage capacity, when it would be far easier to build many small stone or mud brick huts in which to store smaller quantities, in a more distributed fashion.

If he wants to say that his belief about the pyramids is Biblical, he'd best write his own unique Bible that includes that part. Because the bibles everyone else has access to don't.

"Please, media, lay off the stories that might knock Carson out of the Republican primaries while he is still accomplishing damage".

Bernie Saunders is no fool.

@152

"I am wondering to whom Jill’s question is directed, and where she is seeing the atheistic agenda. Certainly not the original post, which mentions religion approximately nowhere."

Well, I for one, would prefer a president who doesn't take direction from imaginary friends but that's never been an (obvious) option on the ballot.

All this intense Main Stream Media focus on Ben Carson’s personal history, and especially on Ben’s recollection of his pre-college years, reminds me of all the attention the MSM paid to Barack Obama’s personal history when Barack was first running for president.

Remember all those extensive MSM investigations and headlines about Barack and
His socialist father
His socialist mother and grandparents
His father-figure, communist Frank Marshall Davis
Communist Dr. John Drew at Occidental
Marxist mentor and professor Charles Ogletree at Harvard
Radical Reverend Jeremiah Wright
Radical Bill Ayers
Radical Bernadine Dohrn
Obama fundraiser, real estate “buddy”, and felon Tony Rezko?

Remember all the MSM focus on these relationships?
I don’t.
……………..
Barack, himself, doesn’t always perfectly remember long-ago things, either.

“He doesn’t remember the names of a lot of people in his life,” said Ben LaBolt, a campaign spokesman.”
-From the NYT article titled
“Obama’s Account of New York Years Often Differs From What Others Say”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/30/us/politics/30obama.html?_r=0

All this intense Main Stream Media focus on Ben Carson’s personal history, and especially on Ben’s recollection of his pre-college years, reminds me of all the attention the MSM paid to Barack Obama’s personal history when Barack was first running for president.

Who could have foretold S.N.'s bumbling into a defense of Barack Hussein Obongonana?

(Continuing from here)

"Can we just leave?" the spectator asks, already standing up.
"Hell no!" his companion. "After everything you told me about the last performance, I have to witness this myself."
"You really don't".
"Sure I do. Nobody can be that stupid, really."
The spectator sighs, and sits back down. "You just wait..."

Other audience members are already sifting uncomfortably in their seats, glancing at their watches, chatting on their phones, ignoring the stage.

"Fine" says See Noevo. "I can see you are overwhelmed by my mastery of YouTube videos. Fine." He looks around, a hopeless expression on his face, desperate for something that would grab the audience's attention. Not seeing anything else around him, in desperation he squints at the screen until he notices youtube advertising a news clip about Ben Carson.

"This whole West Point debacle is ridiculous!" he postulates. "I've never seen Ben Carson state he (See Noevo makes scare quotes with his hands)actually applied(again, scare quotes) to West Point, so it must not have happened. Preposterous to even think that."

(pause).

"But he said he was offered a scholarship" says a helpful voice from the audience.
"Exactly!" See Noevo exclaims, jumping up. "Nowhere!"
"What?" says someone from the audience.
"So it must be true! Ben Carson never lies, because Christian faith denounces liars. Carson for president!"
"But West Point doesn't even offer scholarships!" adds another voice.
"Scholarships Shmolarships. I bet you're a liberal racist, piling your hate on Carson like that!"

"Oh. My. God." whispers our spectator's companion.
"Told yah." sighs the spectator.

"And hideous Hillary lied too! About many things! Many!"
"So? What does that have to do with Ben Car-"
"She's a filthy lying bitch I wouldn't tap even if she begged me on her knees, clad... only in fur bikinis... and chained to the floor... hair done up like Princess Leila..."
"Leia"
See Noevo snaps out of his reverie. It takes a moment for him to collect himself, by practicing golf swings.
"Like I said. A horrible lying liberal cunt who's not fit for presidency."
"Because she lied?" asks someone from the audience.
"That's right. The bitch should be behind bars." See Noevo says.
"So if you lie you're not fit to be president?"
"What are you, stupid?" See Noevo snaps. "That's what I said?"
"So if Ben Carson were to lie..." the someone from the audience asks, leaving the sentence hanging.
See Noevo turns red. "You are just like the others!" he screams, "swinging wild unfounded accusations and smearing the good Christian people everywhere with your slanderous libel! Liberal fiend!"

(silence)

"You're all liberal fiends if you don't agree with me!" See Noevo shouts, his arms flailing wildly.
"Didn't he stab someone when he was a teenager?" asks a random spectator.
"Of Course he didn't!" See snaps. "You're nothing but a racist, you see a black man of course you think he stabbed-"
"He even wrote about it in his autobiography!"
"He didn't! You lie! He wouldn't... really?"

(pause)

See Noevo turns to his computer and types frantically.

(pause) His lips move as he reads.

"You still think he's presidential material?"
"of course he is! I want him to be president, so he should be president!"
"You think someone who tried to stab a guy for changing the channel is fit for duty?"
"It says here he was bullied in class and tried to defend himself!" See exclaims, triumphant. "You're spreading malignant lies!"
"He wrote about changing the channel in his books."
"Says here he was provoked!" See says, pointing at his screen. reads "I told him to back off, but he wouldn't quit pestering me. There! Vindication!"
"You think someone who resorts to lethal violence is presidential material?"
"I, uh... Of course he is! It's... It shows the grace of God!"

(pause)

"And besides! That Muslim foreigner Obama lied!"
"About what?"
"Whatever! He lies! Constantly! And evuh budy know. Him be a runnin' joke." See says.

(shocked silence)

"Fucking Half-nigger, should have known his place." See mutters to himself, forgetting he is wearing a button microphone.

(shocked silence)

See Noevo pretends to laugh. "A joke you progressive secularists obviously didn't grasp..."
"What would that even have to do with Ben Carson's violent past?"
"Are you on drugs?" See Noevo answers, waving his hand in dismissal.
"As always, liberal atheists can't even respond properly to any of my masterful arguments."

(stunned silence)

It isn't often you see someone state they completely reject reality and prefer their own fever dreams as the one in post 161.

@ dean

What was the Fox News motto, already? Something like:
"It's not me who is beyond the sanity horizon, it's everybody else who is liberal"

Eh, it's on par with Ben Carson. If the whole "pyramids were Joseph's granaries" episode is not a textbook case of delusional beliefs, bordering on clinical insanity, I don't know what could be.
I mean, the pyramids are just there. Millions of people have visiting them, starting with tomb raiders within a few decades after the pyramids' completion. You just have to go over there to check if the pyramids are fit to hold grains.

gaist and dean – my biggest fans. Or should I say stalkers?
In either case, obsessed with me.

I thought the telemarketers selling See Noevo merchandise were supposed to pretend I wasn't there?

I only bother to address your posts if I think they're idiotic and incoherent enough to be made fun of. If you think I'm stalking you, I'd recommend toning down the stupid, or finding alternate venues for your outbursts - I'm so obsessed with you to have never replied to any of your no doubt inane musings outside Respectful Insolence, and often enough not here either.

As a matter of principle, I don't sacrifice more than a waste-able coffee break on any troll-feeding post, yours included, and only two or three of those a week at that.

But it's flattering that even with my unedited, unrevised skits written in third language, you recognized yourself in them. It's a point of pride that my characters are true to life, after all.

It isn’t often you see someone state they completely reject reality and prefer their own fever dreams as the one in post 161.

Ditto for #168.

The three stories on that list that aren't deranged conspiracy theories -- Ayers/Dohrn, Rezko and Wright -- all received months of coverage; he was questioned about them repeatedly during debates, press conferences, etc.; and all three were broken by mainstream media outlets.

The birther and actually-a-muslim stories also received mainstream coverage in 2008, as did the claims that John McCain had an illegitimate black child and that Sarah Palin's daughter was an unwed teen mother.

The last proved to be true! The other three were debunked. The degree of scrutiny Carson is getting is routine. For Obama, it was actually much worse. His campaign eventually had to put up a "fight the smears" website to deal with it all. And (as I recall) not all of it originated on the right. Some of it came from the Clinton campaign.

The only thing that distinguishes the scrutiny of Carson from that of any other candidate is how badly he's handling it. Unless he's just running for the donor cash. In that case, he's doing great.

The only thing that distinguishes the scrutiny of Carson from that of any other candidate is how badly he’s handling it. Unless he’s just running for the donor cash. In that case, he’s doing great.

The amazing thing is that he has, apparently, decided that the fact he managed to overcome the massive difficulties of a childhood in poverty to become a very talented and successful surgeon is not enough of a background to get the right wing to take him seriously. I find that bit of his story truly amazing. The only reason I can think of that he (and his handler, the truly awful Allen West) realize that having a candidate whose mother received public assistance and food stamps wouldn't be taken well by the tea baggers who call the shots for today's Republicans, so they have to cast him as being a victim of the left not just now but his entire life. (Note: Carson has been very open about his mother receiving assistance and hasn't shied from it in the past, so I assume the pressure to do so now comes from others.)

The McCain's-adopted-daughter-is-actually-his-mongrel-bastard-child story emerged and got media coverage during the 2000 primaries, and came from the Bush camp. (Nobody is better at negative than Karl Rove.)

It came up again in 2008, but on reflection, I'm not sure that it again got mainstream play.

The point still stands, though. This stuff is routine.

(Note: Carson has been very open about his mother receiving assistance and hasn’t shied from it in the past, so I assume the pressure to do so now comes from others.)

He also admits that he has affirmative action (euphemistically referred to as "special consideration") to thank for his admission to Yale, and that it worked so well for him that by the time he was accepted for neurosurgical residency, "no special consideration was needed."

But he's against affirmative action.

Wait. I only just now realized that's why the right -- including Carson -- is always carrying on about Obama's college records and asking how he got into Columbia: affirmative action.

Hm. Columbia wasn't nearly as hard to get into before it went coed as it is now. So maybe, maybe not. But what hypocrites, either way.

Jill:

Secondly, why do you criticize one’s religion? I am not a religious person – but who really cares what he believes about pyramids. All I care about is someone that can add 2 + 2 and get 4. I think he is the only candidate that will be able to do so.

Thing is, his wacky belief about the pyramids makes me seriously doubt his ability to add 2 + 2 and get 4. It's a classic loony claim on par with the flat Earth and the Moon hoax, so if he think its holds water, he demonstrates himself to be prone to believing anything presented to him in a sufficiently flattering way. Or, in a way which flatters one of his preexisting viewpoints.

Look, I am a Christian myself, and I have no quarrel with any particular religion. Believing that a deity creating the world and wants us to be nice to each other and gave us some guidelines for accomplishing that is not a bad thing. But believing any damn fool thing that comes along demonstrates a lack of judgement. I can't go test whether Moses really parted the Red Sea, or whether people really do reincarnate after death as part of a long march towards Nirvana. But the pyramids would make pretty pathetic granaries, and there's quite a lot of contemporary documentation (the Egyptians did keep records of their own) showing their funerary purpose. It's just stupid. It doesn't even bolster what he thinks it does (that Joseph convinced Pharoah to store grain against a coming famine, which I'm not sure is anything worth arguing about anyway given famines did happen from time to time in the ancient world and people weren't idiots and did know that stocking up was a good idea -- it's not like this could even remotely be the One True Piece of Evidence that the Bible Is True).

It's up there with chemtrails and HAARP as far as I'm concerned. It's baloney, and that he embraced it is a red flag. I don't care that there's a religious connection to this particular bit of balderdash; that's irrelevant.

ann@178

He also admits that he has affirmative action (euphemistically referred to as “special consideration”) to thank for his admission to Yale

It's funny that is something that needs to be 'admitted'. Must be hard to be a success story of a policy that your party forces you to oppose.

Calli Arcale@179

Believing that a deity creating the world and wants us to be nice to each other and gave us some guidelines for accomplishing that is not a bad thing.

Well put. Actually reminded me of a YouTube video I came across the other day and had meant to post as a response to See Neovo.

https://youtu.be/FHKQHL8gkQE

It’s funny that is something that needs to be ‘admitted’. Must be hard to be a success story of a policy that your party forces you to oppose.

I hesitated over that, but couldn't think of a more neutral word.

"Acknowledges" is one, though.

Gaist,

Well I for one greatly enjoy your skits. It makes me think there's a troll shaped gap in the canon that needs to be plugged up with the panache of a talented humorist. Something dealing with weaponized stupidity and demagogues...

Speaking of Carson, pictures of his house suggest that, as one wag put it, he shares interior decorators with Saddam Hussein. Personally I'm not sure which I like more, the painting of a smiling Jesus presenting his best bud Ben to the world, or the lofty one of Carson positioned to gaze down upon unsuspecting supplicants as they approach an alter-type arrangement.

Holy crap on a cracker, that man is tacky.

Well put. Actually reminded me of a YouTube video I came across the other day and had meant to post as a response to See Neovo.

Yeah.

At this point, it's maybe hard to remember that the whole Benghazi thing actually started because the Christian right made a video that was so virulently offensive to Muslims that it triggered anti-American protests, flag-desecration, and other assorted acts of mayhem (including a suicide-bombing in Afghanistan that killed nine people) in Egypt, India, Pakistan, Tunisia, Sudan, Yemen, Lebanon, and elsewhere, thus making the world a less safe place for Americans, generally.

That having started on the same day as the Benghazi attack, there was widespread speculation that they were related.

So when Clinton made her remarks about Benghazi (in which she attributed the attack to a "small savage group" of "heavily armed militants" who did not represent the people or government of Libya), she also said:

Some have sought to justify this vicious behavior, along with the protest that took place at our Embassy in Cairo yesterday, as a response to inflammatory material posted on the internet. America's commitment to religious tolerance goes back to the very beginning of our nation. But let me be clear -- there is no justification for this, none. Violence like this is no way to honor religion or faith. And as long as there are those who would take innocent life in the name of God, the world will never know a true and lasting peace.

That's what they really have a problem with. So they're pretending that there's no conceivable reason why, when speaking in public in front of the whole wide world, the Secretary of State might choose not to immediately name armed violent suspects who were still at large before anyone was really certain where they were, who they were, what they were up to, how dangerous it was, and to whom.

What she said to her daughter (the attack was by "an al-Qaeda-like group") and the Prime Minister of Egypt (then-current intelligence indicated it was unrelated to the video and pre-planned by Ansar-al-Islam) is not inconsistent with what she said in public.

So unless they're too stupid to grasp that what she says in private to her daughter and the prime minister of Egypt doesn't have the same potential to put American lives at risk as what she says in her televised remarks, they're just pissed off with her for doing what she could to put out a fire that they started by denouncing the video..

Nothing's ever their fault.

by denouncing the video..

I guess that should be "implicitly denouncing." Calling it "inflammatory" is hardly a denunciation. She was actually making it clear that the protests in Cairo (which were a response to the video) were on the protesters.

/off-topic.

So unless they’re too stupid to grasp that what she says in private to her daughter and the prime minister of Egypt doesn’t have the same potential to put American lives at risk as what she says in her televised remarks, they’re just pissed off with her for doing what she could to put out a fire that they started by denouncing the video..

Simpler than that: many of them have spent over 20 years railing against the "evil" Clintons, and they were sure the hearings would show to the world that they were right. When that didn't happen all that was left to do was plow on insisting they were correct even though evidence shows otherwise. IOW, dishonesty as usual for them.

First, I'd like to thank ORAC for a thoughtful article. I think his point of Dunning-Kruger, and motivated reasoning are spot on.
Two additional points I'd add as possible explanations (or perhaps clarifications) are:
1) Very intelligent people (interestingly males more than females) tend to 'think outside the box.' They tend to look for alternative solutions to problems, rather than using traditional methods. This is a twist on Dunning-Kruger. They are more likely to challenge assumptions - even assumptions of the 'experts' or just because they are a 'scientist.' For example, nobody told Carson how to separate the twins. He had to trust himself to literally 'make this up' from internal understanding that he trusted.
2) During residency especially, a physician tends to learn that the textbook doesn't necessarily contain the answers. This is both because the textbook is incomplete (e.g. it doesn't answer what is correct for 'this' patient in front of you), but also that it is often incorrect (e.g. it was written by someone else with failings, and may not be as smart as you anyway). This later effect is important because it causes the person to come to conclusions by thinking for themselves, rather than relying on others to provide answers.
These points are notably relevant because the tone the article was that Dunning-Kruger is creating 'incorrect' beliefs. I would correct this to say 'beliefs' that ‘_I_ don't understand.’ At the risk of losing the audience here - They may or may not be incorrect.
I personally think his assumptions about pyramids, for example, are ... well... 'hard to understand'. At the same time, I am no more an expert on pyramids than he is, and his belief in pyramids is largely independent of issues I care about. For me, debate of such points is just falling into 'motivated reasoning' without even thinking ‘do I really care?’ But, even for issues that might have more importance if you discount at the level of 'That's just stupid, 97% of ... agree - He's just an idiot' - please remember that at one time 97% of ... once believed the earth was flat. At the time “it was 'obvious'”.
Also, this is quite relevant to the extensive discussion in the comments because it demonstrates that the same things going on in the participants. On both sides, you all probably fancy yourselves as 'smart', try to 'think for yourself.' But it’s clear that many all are stuck in the 'motivated reasoning' part. You came with an idea that you were right and will use any attempt to belittle the other side to prove your point! It sounds like most of you wouldn't even _consider_ listening to a reasonable argument from the other side. You all are way too busy attempting to 'prove your point', to acknowledge insight or truth.
For example, It’s clear that 'gaist' and others have flipped the bozo switch on 'see noevo' and vice versa. We tend to believe anyone that thinks differently is a 'bozo.' Don't flip the bozo switch (look this up if you don’t know what that means)!
First, _sometimes_ the bozo has important insights even while they may have difficulty expressing them. If you listened with attempt to understand them, you are likely to learn something, even if they are ‘crazy’. Listening doesn't have to mean you are persuaded, but you’ll be more likely to learn if you simply ask ‘why do you believe …’ rather than attacking with ‘you’re an idiot if you believe…’ .
Second, if your attempting to hone your arguments, you'll be more effective at actually persuading someone if understand where they are coming from (e.g. which arguments are weak to them and why, which are strong and why). You will almost certainly put someone else into a ‘motivated reasoning mode’ if you call them names or tell them that they are 'stupid' for believing something. When you do this, you are defeating your own cause. We are all familiar with rational for 'our side'. But we feel uncomfortable reaching out to others and understand 'their side.' But, if you are not intent on understanding the other side first, I would suggest you are getting yourself in a tizzy for nothing. You are not convincing anyone but yourself, because you don't even understand that you don't understand. If your intent is to convince, you need to clarify where the gap in understanding is, and _lead_ from that gap to your point instead.
For example, I liked ORAC's point about malpractice. He is correctly pointing out that this is a weak argument - showing that he is at least attempting to listen to alternative points of view.
We are all biased by the backgrounds we come from. For example, it's relatively easy to predict political positions based on zip code alone, or what channel they watch. This is because of the crowd we talk with and _listen_ to.
So with that soap box intro – I’ll shut up and listen.
For starters, I’ll tell you that I am a physician with an EE background (I tend to understand science and medicine pretty well and, I’m brighter than ‘average’). I am able to understand good arguments, technically an ‘independent’ (I don’t care for either of the political parties) but tend to think conservatively. For example, I’m very much a small government kind of guy, mainly because I believe that government tends to screw up most things it touches. I’ve experience that first hand, and see a lot through that lens. Also, I’m Catholic and believe that life begins at inception. I grew up in Nevada and parts of the Midwest. You get the picture.
So I’ll start with the folks on the left side (I’ll call this voting ‘D’). Carson isn’t my favorite candidate, but he does indicate agreement with some stuff I like (e.g. small gov, balanced budgets, anti-abortion, etc). I believe he currently is being treated unfairly by the press, because IMHO there is little to no evidence that ‘lied’ or ‘fabricated,’ and that ‘to bear false witnesses’ is wrong. I’ve reviewed the facts of the stories.
You might call me an ‘idiot,’ but instead clarify how my thinking unclear, and how you so sure that you know better than I do?
Currently you are losing my vote. Why do you think you are convincing me – e.g. vote ‘D’ (or for that matter anyone else who wasn’t just going to vote ‘D’ because they always vote ‘D’)? Hint, you’ll never sell me based on an argument like ‘97% believe…’ because I don’t ‘just accept’ arguments that are ‘simple appeal to authority.’
But, you might sell me on arguments like ‘evidence xx would support a conclusion of yy‘ because I can break that down into ‘we agree/disagree on xx’ or ‘we agree/disagree on the word supports’. Based on this we can explore if this is a disagreement in facts, or disagreement in interpretation of them. Both are focused on an objective of better understanding each other and finding truth – not necessarily ‘winning.’
By the way – same questions for the folks on the ‘right’ (I’ll call this voting ‘R’). So far you are winning me personally, but that is probably in large part because of my starting bias. Your clearly loosing most other participants here. Why do you think you are convincing to somebody who is currently anticipating to vote ‘D’? Do you even have clarity over what their concerns are?

Obstreperous Applesauce @ 183

Carson is nothing if not a model of Self effacing humility.

The picture with Jesus is a winner.

Larry @187:
I would love to respond to your comment, but the total absence of paragraph breaks makes it impossible to read. In the future, please consider adding some white space to your comments.

Carson isn’t my favorite candidate, but he does indicate agreement with some stuff I like (e.g. small gov, balanced budgets, anti-abortion, etc). I believe he currently is being treated unfairly by the press, because IMHO there is little to no evidence that ‘lied’ or ‘fabricated,’ and that ‘to bear false witnesses’ is wrong. I’ve reviewed the facts of the stories.
You might call me an ‘idiot,’ but instead clarify how my thinking unclear, and how you so sure that you know better than I do?

I'm not sure I know better than you. Like you, I try to arrive at my conclusions via the best argument I can muster. Like you, I have biases. Like you, I try not to be blinded by them.

FWIW, I'm not a big fan of Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, and I think Dr. Carson has an appealing personality and a number of admirable achievements to his credit.

I actually agree that there's little to no evidence that he "lied" or "fabricated." But that's usually the case. Conscious intent to deceive is an inherently difficult thing to prove.

To me, your thinking is unclear in the following ways:

(1) If the candidate is running on his biography, it's not unfair for the media to question it. In fact, it's unfair for the candidate to refuse to provide answers. I mean "Ben Carson for President: Just Take His Word for It!" is not the direction I want to see the country going in

(2) That he wasn't prepared for this is just bonkers. And it does not attest well to either his capacity to lead or his capacity to unite that he wasn't.

Furthermore, it's extremely likely that both the Yale anecdote/high school race riot story in the WSJ and the West Point thing on Politico were fragging from his primary competition, and highly probable that the CNN thing on his childhood violence was, too.

So. Maybe he's just pretending not to know that. But that secular-progressive-plot stuff is, in itself, not exactly a testament to his powers of discernment.

(3) Whatever his intentions may be, his statements are frequently factually inaccurate, embellished, exaggerated, or false in a way that invariably works to his advantage, personally and/or politically.

For example:

It's flatly not true that he had no involvement with Mannatech.

It's also flatly not true that everybody who signed the Declaration of Independence had no experience in elected office.

People do not go to prison straight and come out gay.

Pediatricians have not cut down on the number and proximity of vaccines because they realize there are "too many in too short a period of time."

It's not true that his tax plan wouldn't leave the federal government $1.1 trillion in arrears.

The US Constitution does not make everything except for a flat tax un-American.

It's somewhat misleading to assert that "scientists" think the pyramids were built by aliens.

And same goes for his having been offered a full scholarship to West Point.
______________

Everybody does it. But that's immaterial.

Seriously. If he wanted to run on policy, he could have written a book about it. Failing that, he could get some more proposals up on his website. There's not a lot there, and most of what is doesn't make sense.

I mean, that's he in favor of a balanced budget amendment doesn't mean much unless he has a plan for getting one passed and the skills to make it real. Right?

I was sorely, sorely tempted to post a comment humorously juxtaposing Larry's assertion that he is brighter than average with some of the funnier of his mistakes in usage and spelling, but ann has set a better example.

JustaTech@189

In the future, please consider adding some white space to your comments.

In Larry's defense, he did include single line breaks and that is generally acceptable as a paragraph break (I think). It's also much closer than some get. But you are right that in this format there really needs to be actual whitespace for readability's sake.

The content needs to be reworked too. The whole 'D' and 'R' thing is overly convoluted. There's no penalty for saying Democrat and Republican. I'll give Larry the benefit of the doubt and assume that the defense of See Noevo is simply due to lack of familiarity.

For example, nobody told Carson how to separate the twins. He had to trust himself to literally ‘make this up’ from internal understanding that he trusted.

Not entirely true. He didn't start from scratch. Not to diminish the achievement but he didn't pull it from thin air, there was our knowledge of human biology guiding him, not just God's will or whatever.

At the same time, I am no more an expert on pyramids than he is, and his belief in pyramids is largely independent of issues I care about.

Yes, but that doesn't mean that there aren't any experts on pyramids. And when you're not an expert it is generally a good idea to defer to an expert rather than another non-expert.

The difference between flat earthers is that there was evidence supporting the spherical model. Before such evidence existed claiming the Earth was round would actually have been crazy and only correct by coincidence. There is no such evidence for the grain storage hypothesis.

The pyramid thing really doesn't have much play on current issues but it reveals (at least) two things I don't want in our leaders.

1. Failure to recognize his own lack of expertise.

A very important part of leading is properly delegating tasks. You need to know what you don't know and surround yourself with people who do.

2. Inability to change dogmatic beliefs in the face of opposing evidence.

Yes, in your flat earth analogy Carson is a flat earther refusing to accept overwhelming evidence that it is in fact round. The Bible says so is not good evidence; it's pure dogma.

capnkrunch @ 192:
I remember reading the very long article in the Baltimore Sun about the separation of those twins (I was supposed to be using the newspaper to protect the floor from a crafting project and got distracted). While Dr Carson was certainly the lead and a very important part of that surgery, he also had a huge team working with him, and they did a *lot* of planning.

That's hardly "making it up".

The Bible says so is not good evidence;

Especially because the Bible does not in fact say that Joseph built the pyramids for grain storage.

it’s pure dogma.

Not even. There is no part of Seventh-Day Adventism that says "We believe that Joseph built the pyramids for grain storage."

He's just using magical thinking, either because it tickles him and he likes it or because that's just his natural default setting.

ann@194

Not even. There is no part of Seventh-Day Adventism that says “We believe that Joseph built the pyramids for grain storage.”

Ah, gotcha. So it's like young earth creationism; purely rectally sourced but guised as supported by the Bible.

Currently you are losing my vote. Why do you think you are convincing me – e.g. vote ‘D’ (or for that matter anyone else who wasn’t just going to vote ‘D’ because they always vote ‘D’)?

Why do you think anyone is trying to convince you or anyone else how to vote? It was S.N.'s pathetic need for attention that injected Clinton into the comments.

Larry...

1) Very intelligent people (interestingly males more than females) tend to ‘think outside the box.’

I'm curious as to your source. I don't necessarily disagree with you, but I've heard pretty much the same thing said about females more than males, gays more than straights, those with X mental condition over neurotypicals and so on and so forth, a statement like that has little value without evaluating the source (if then). But I digress...

They are more likely to challenge assumptions – even assumptions of the ‘experts’ or just because they are a ‘scientist.’

Possibly, but there is no intrinsic worth in challenging assumptions, just for the sake of thinking 'outside the box'. That is Dunning-Kruger.

e the tone the article was that Dunning-Kruger is creating ‘incorrect’ beliefs. I would correct this to say ‘beliefs’ that ‘_I_ don’t understand.’
I didn't read it like that, although without a comprehensive discussion on an issue it might be hard to identify those who have arrived at the 'right' conclusion due to 'wrong' reasoning, so examples are usually about 'incorrect' beliefs. Dunning-Kruger isn't about being right or wrong, in my opinion, but about evaluating your opinion as evidence...

Which brings me to

I personally think his assumptions about pyramids, for example, are … well… ‘hard to understand’. At the same time, I am no more an expert on pyramids than he is, and his belief in pyramids is largely independent of issues I care about.

What with visiting inside two different pyramids, knowing a little of the methods they used to build them and the tools and materials those ancient Egyptians had at their disposal, and actually studying architecture for a bit, I'd say I'm more of an expert than Ben Carson is (while fully admitting that I'm no expert at all), I think his assumption is not based on facts or anything else than motivated reasoning and ignorance or dismissal of easily verifiable facts.

And, like others have said, it doesn't speak well for his willingness or ability to consider and evaluate evidence, and to familiarize himself with basic facts before making up his mind. This, or his stubbornness to admit being mistaken, regardless of evidence. Neither is a good trait for the President of USA to have.

It sounds like most of you wouldn’t even _consider_ listening to a reasonable argument from the other side.

Based on what? I think most people here actually explain their reasoning when they disagree with someone else's view.

And if you're thinking of me, I still disagree. My only 'expertise' is in a very narrow niche of the art world, and I assume on any other subject, I'm in the presence of people who know more than I do about the subject. I listen to what information they provide, and try to form checkable assumptions. Then I check them. I've changed my mind even here on RI, several times, when presented with new evidence, and I'm willing to do it again, if a persuasive enough argument or point of view is presented.

It’s clear that ‘gaist’ and others have flipped the bozo switch on ‘see noevo’ and vice versa. We tend to believe anyone that thinks differently is a ‘bozo.’ Don’t flip the bozo switch

I don't think I have 'switched the bozo bit' on See Noevo, at least on principle. I might be biased against him, based on his past performance here, but like I said - I make fun of him when I think his posts deserve it. I evaluate. If I ever find him making a coherent and persuasive point, I'll consider it as thoroughly as I'd consider the same point coming from anybody.

And for what it's worth, I actually believe my skits are getting through to him more than any post I wrote where I tried reasoning with him. If you're interested further, search Respectful Insolence for antiabortion and see the comments for yourself. I personally think he's not interested in exchange of ideas.

And coming back to the 'bozo bit', I'd like to take the wordplay a little further. Rather than the colloquial usage, I'd like to pretend you used it in the original meaning. Think of my satire (such as it is) as the weakest level of protection against See Noevo's posts infecting spreading outwards.

^ Oh, and...

please remember that at one time 97% of … once believed the earth was flat. At the time “it was ‘obvious’”.

Leaving aside what the ellipsis dots are doing there, the assertion is a stereotypical falsehood.

Also, and claiming at least a modicum of expertise on visual arts - jumping Jesus on a bogo-stick, Ben Carson sure likes looking at himself.

Not entirely true. He didn’t start from scratch. Not to diminish the achievement but he didn’t pull it from thin air, there was our knowledge of human biology guiding him, not just God’s will or whatever

I also expect that state of the art imaging studies were also helpful.

Is Ben Carson intelligent? He's good at memorizing facts and cutting. That's what people who graduate medical school are good at. (At this point I'm starting to wonder if he actually did graduate med school) But is the ability to memorize lumps of info actually intelligence? It requires no reasoning or logic. Personally, I've got some serious doubts about Dr Carson. At the very least he's willfully ignorant. Personally, I think he's a habitual liar who isn't used to getting called on his BS.

People who were educated have known the Earth is round, and its approximate size, since the third century BC. People who weren't didn't usually spend time thinking about it. I don't think there's ever been at time where 97% of humans total thought it was flat.

The idea of seperating craniopagus conjoined twins has existed for a long time, and the theory is simple enough, but the potential for blood loss has been so great that it was only first attempted in 1951. Even now most times it's been done one twin has died or suffered brain damage. (This does include at least one of Carson's cases, but it's such a difficult operation that I have respect for anyone who can complete it.)

ann #175 writes
“For Obama, it was actually much worse. His campaign eventually had to put up a “fight the smears” website to deal with it all. And (as I recall) not all of it originated on the right. Some of it came from the Clinton campaign.”

Do you (or anyone out there) recall any of the smears coming from the Main Stream Media or liberal websites?

I don’t.

I’m curious as to your source.

I am too.

I'm aware of research suggesting that men are likelier to be perceived as outside-the-box thinkers than women.

But that's due to inside-the-box thinking on gender by both men and women. I've never heard that either is categorically less box-bound than the other.

Re: JustaTech # 189
Sorry, I could have spent more time preparing. Sorry that you had difficulty. Will try to use more spacing next time.

Re:JP #191.
Also, Sorry. Spelling and grammar was never my strong suit. For what its worth, my point on 'brighter than average' was only that I have capacity to understand. If you think that my intelligence is 'below average,' so be it. I am comfortable. I concede that you are 'brighter than I am'. Your English is perfect. Congratulations.

You didn't convince me of much, however. And, your comment speaks volumes about your general attitude toward others. You appear more interested in making someone else feel small, than in engaging, attempting to understand, or helping. You are all about making yourself look 'smart,' because god forbid they see the real you. Your smart - OK. I care more about caring and compassionate. Unfortunately, that is exactly the impression I get from many on the left. You all talk about 'compassion', but you act differently. Underneath you act condescending, arrogant, and hypocritical. You reinforce the image I hoped might change.

Re: Ann # 190.
Thanks for your response. I agree that it is fair to address Carson on his bio in general. I also agree that he has made a number of questionable statements, and that the proposals on his website lack substance. Those are legit issues to raise. Of course we shouldn't 'Just take his word for it'. I would never say that we should. Again, he isn't my favorite candidate, but honestly, I could make the same statement about almost any candidate. Finding flaws is easy. I agree that that 'a plan to getting on passed and skills to make it real' would be nice. But, you and I both know this is an unrealistic standard. The democratic candidates don't appear any stronger with respect to any of the issues, but we probably just disagree on that. And even with respect to your true statements in #3 (with exception of the 'full scholarship'), there are similarly dumb things, or flat lies coming out of more or less all the front runners. By this comparison, IMHO, Carson looks the least of evils.

I disagree with the assertion of CNN and Politico (also the WSJ piece) are even about his biography, however. To me these seem like pure 'Hit' pieces. For example, Carson didn't ever state that he ever applied to West Point, only that he got an offer, and even their own materials they call this 'scholarship'. He was off on his recording the date, but it sounds very probable that that an offer was actually made. To say that Carson 'fabricated' this is at best sloppy journalism, and at worst completely dishonest. Similarly, regarding the CNN piece, I have no idea what he did or didn't do at age 15, but would never be persuaded because somebody went and talked to a few folks in his hometown that 'knew' him, but didn't know what happened in some rage of anger. There is simply _nothing_ here other than slander. And to me it doesn't matter that he was/wasn't 'prepared' for slander (I suspect he was expecting something), or that he could answered (IMHO he did answer). Slander is just wrong.

Do you (or anyone out there) recall any of the smears coming from the Main Stream Media or liberal websites?

I don’t.

Does Fox count?

Ann #184:

“At this point, it’s maybe hard to remember that the whole Benghazi thing actually started because the Christian right made a video …”

That’s odd. That’s not what Sec. of State Hillary Clinton thought:
1)Email from Hillary to Chelsea 45 minutes after Hillary had issued a statement blaming YouTube-inflamed mobs: “Two of our officers were killed in Benghazi by an Al Queda-like group.”

2)Hillary to Libyan President Mohamed Magariaf the night of the Benghazi attack: “We have asked for the Libyan government to provide additional security to the compound immediately as there is a gun battle ongoing, which I understand Ansar as Sharia [sic] is claiming responsibility for.”

3)Hillary phone call the next day, 9/12, with the Egyptian Prime Minister Hesham Kandil: “We KNOW that the attack in Libya had NOTHING TO DO WITH THE FILM. It was a PLANNED ATTACK—NOT A PROTEST.”

You didn’t convince me of much, however.

I wasn't trying to convince you of anything; where do you get this idea that anybody here is? I can't help it if I find the notion that "life begins at inception" to be interpretable in some pretty entertaining ways. I generally aim to entertain. Just ask my students.

And, your comment speaks volumes about your general attitude toward others. You appear more interested in making someone else feel small, than in engaging, attempting to understand, or helping. You are all about making yourself look ‘smart,’ because god forbid they see the real you. ... I care more about caring and compassionate.

Your seeming belief that a single comment can tell you much of anything about somebody's general level of compassion or comfort with letting other people see the "real them" speaks volumes about your general attitude toward people.

Your smart – OK.

Yes. I am.

Unfortunately, that is exactly the impression I get from many on the left. You all talk about ‘compassion’, but you act differently. Underneath you act condescending, arrogant, and hypocritical. You reinforce the image I hoped might change.

Who is this "you all" that you think you're talking to? Do you think that everybody who posts here is a liberal or a leftist or whatever? I can assure you that this is not the case. The OP wasn't even about Carson's politics, for Pete's sake. Besides all that, for all you know, I could be a Republican or a Libertarian or not even a resident of the US.

life begins at inception
It was a good film, but let's not go overboard.

To ann #184 (continued):

“… a video that was so virulently offensive to Muslims that it triggered anti-American protests, flag-desecration, and other assorted acts of mayhem (including a suicide-bombing in Afghanistan that killed nine people) in Egypt, India, Pakistan, Tunisia, Sudan, Yemen, Lebanon, and elsewhere, thus making the world a less safe place for Americans, generally.”

Anti-American protests, mayhem, and suicide-bombing across the Middle East and Africa?
Didn’t such things happen regularly, and usually daily, *before* the subject video hit the internet.
And haven’t anti-American protests, mayhem, and suicide-bombing across the Middle East and Africa happened regularly, and usually daily, *since* the time the subject video hit the internet three years ago?

If all this is video-driven, then I guess videos similar to the subject video must be getting released about daily for the last couple decades.
…………………
“That’s what they really have a problem with. So they’re pretending that there’s no conceivable reason why, when speaking in public in front of the whole wide world, the Secretary of State might choose not to immediately name armed violent suspects who were still at large before anyone was really certain where they were, who they were, what they were up to, how dangerous it was, and to whom.”

No. What they (and me) have a problem with is that there’s a VERY conceivable reason why:
It would put the lie to the Obama re-election bid platform (i.e. ‘GM’s alive and Bin Laden’s dead! Terrorism is on the run!’)
......................
“So unless they’re too stupid to grasp that what she says in private to her daughter and the prime minister of Egypt doesn’t have the same potential to put American lives at risk as what she says in her televised remarks…”

No. Hillary put American lives at risk with or without “video” remarks. She wasn’t protecting American lives, she was protecting a prevaricating progressive presidential re-election campaign.

See, you know where the Bible says: "Do not give false witness."? Does it also say "unless your political rivals do so as well."? Is there some exception to one of God's highest commands that I am aware of?

He was off on his recording the date, but it sounds very probable that that an offer was actually made.

For certain values of "offer" and "actually." If rephrased as "it sounds plausible that somebody at some point suggested that he apply to West Point," I don't think you're going to find much of anybody to argue with.

I was under the impression that one aspect of Carson's multiple contributions was his confidence that techniques in body cooling and hypothermic arrest had advanced enough that the surgery had real prospects of arrest. Is that a fair comment?
I have also gained the impression that a key requirement for a successful neurosurgeon is the confidence and willingness to take chances with someone else's brain.

Is Ben Carson intelligent?
Of course. He would never have accomplished anything without constantly learning, constantly keeping up with a scientific / technical literature.

Ahem.

The three stories on that list that aren’t deranged conspiracy theories — Ayers/Dohrn, Rezko and Wright — all received months of coverage; he was questioned about them repeatedly during debates, press conferences, etc.; and all three were broken by mainstream media outlets.

The birther and actually-a-muslim stories also received mainstream coverage in 2008,

And speaking of inside-the-box thinking.

If the mainstream media really was part of a secular progressive plot, the last thing it would effing want to do is discredit Ben Carson.

In order to get enough delegates to win the nomination, he would have to beat Cruz and Trump in at least some states where race is an issue and also Bush and Rubio in at least some states where most Republican voters are moderate and non-evangelical.

Pretty much the only way a Carson candidacy could happen would be a brokered convention.

But (1) secular progressives would be delighted by that; and (2) either way, it would still be in their best interest for him to stay in, drawing as much money, support and attention away from others and causing as much division and strife in the party as possible.

The stories in the WSJ and Politico were almost certainly planted there by oppo researchers for one of the other Republican candidates. And the CNN story probably was.

Why?

(a) Because the other Republican candidates are the only people who'd benefit by getting him out of the way now.

(b) The West Point story probably wasn't all that labor-or-work intensive, but flacking for the right is Politico's bread-and-butter. That's where they get all their good stories. It's what they do.

(c) It's not like the WSJ has a Detroit bureau, or can afford to send shoe-leather reporters to Michigan looking for people who survived high-school race riots with Ben Carson and were willing to talk about it on a whim. That kind of work is time-consuming and expensive. They are also a conservative publication.

(d) CNN would be very unlikely to make that kind of investment in a story with no natural TV-friendly values, especially far enough in advance and without knowing what kind of answers they'd get. They also virtually never do that kind of reporting and probably don't know how.

(e) Jeb can fix it! (This is how the Bush family campaigns. Has been for decades.)

(f) Conspiracy theories work much better and reach more people on the internet anyway. So quit whining.

and finally:

(g) Just because you don't remember it doesn't mean it never happens.

John Kerry lost an election because of attacks on the things he said and did forty years earlier, all of which received extensive mainstream media coverage.

Al Gore got branded as the guy who boasted about inventing the internet, when that was not actually any more accurate than branding Ben Carson as a guy who boasted about getting into West Point would be.

Hillary Clinton had a scholarly article she wrote about children's rights under the law in 1973 minutely examined by media outlets all across the country, and she wasn't even running. She was just married to someone who was.

Every one of those is more closely equivalent to what Carson's enduring than some demented rumor about how Frank Marshall Davis is Obama's true father, or how sis grandmother was a socialist/bank vice president and his grandfather a socialist/WWII vet/furniture salesman.

It's routine. Get over it.

"I was under the impression that one aspect of Carson’s multiple contributions was his confidence that techniques in body cooling and hypothermic arrest had advanced enough that the surgery had real prospects of arrest. Is that a fair comment?"

To a degree, yeah. He was also willing to do some riskier surgeries in his career, which in many cases turned out well.

Re Gaist # 197
Source was an anecdotal reference I have overheard generally by a couple of teachers I have known - I wasn't trying to be specific, but for instance there is something out there to support this: https://research.collegeboard.org/sites/default/files/publications/2012…

To Larry:

Just a heads up on something gaist told you in #197:

“I don’t think I have ‘switched the bozo bit’ on See Noevo… If you’re interested further, search Respectful Insolence for antiabortion and see the comments for yourself. I personally think he’s not interested in exchange of ideas.”

I think you’ll see that I’m quite interested in exchange of ideas. See for example the exchanging on this 2,100+ comment thread:
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2015/07/27/when-the-antiabortion-move…

I think you’ll see that I’m quite interested in exchange of ideas. See for example the exchanging on this 2,100+ comment thread

I think that's the second attempt I've seen by S.N. at this specifc and wretched form of attention-whoring.

Again, he isn’t my favorite candidate, but honestly, I could make the same statement about almost any candidate.

And you would be speaking for me if you did.

Finding flaws is easy.

But finding nine people who knew Ben Carson in elementary school and junior high who are willing to talk about him to the media is hard. Most people dislike and distrust the media.

It's also time-consuming and expensive.

A good way to avoid having people focus on your flaws is to make a habit out of thinking about whether you're confident that the things you say in print and circulate widely are true before you say them..

I agree that that ‘a plan to getting on passed and skills to make it real’ would be nice. But, you and I both know this is an unrealistic standard.

WRT a balanced budget amendment, that's definitely true.

That being the case, however, that Carson favors one ceases to be a reason to vote for him.

If he had a plan that would reduce or eliminate the national debt, it would be a different story. But he doesn't. He has a plan that would increase it by $1.1 trillion.

Furthermore, it's not actually clear that he knows what the national debt is or how it works.

Besides which, people who have (for example) governed states demonstrably have the skills and know-how to make and realize plans in the political arena. So it's not totally unrealistic in all regards.

The democratic candidates don’t appear any stronger with respect to any of the issues, but we probably just disagree on that.

I vote for the candidate that's less likely to pack the Supreme Court with people who will saddle the country with decisions like Citizens United.

Because I'm never going to be crazy about anyone who's actually electable. But it's not just my country alone. So I'm okay with that.

And even with respect to your true statements in #3 (with exception of the ‘full scholarship’), there are similarly dumb things, or flat lies coming out of more or less all the front runners. By this comparison, IMHO, Carson looks the least of evils.

Honestly, I don't see how. They're all against abortion and in favor of small government. Per your estimation, they all say dumb or untrue things. The only criterion that leaves is that you support him because you think the press is being unfair.

And that makes no sense. Plus if you wait a little while, it'll be Rubio's turn any minute now. (Jeb. Don't count him out.)

JP #210 reprimanding Larry:
“Who is this “you all” that you think you’re talking to? Do you think that everybody who posts here is a liberal or a leftist or whatever? I can assure you that this is not the case.”

Well, I think it’s *virtually* the case.
Like “97%”, colloquially speaking.

To ann who never addresses anyone #217:

“If the mainstream media really was part of a secular progressive plot…”

Well, “plot” is a pretty powerful word, kind of like “conspiracy”, and would imply a formally communicated and orchestrated plan across all the mainstream media outlets.
I’m not saying that.

But do you believe the mainstream media does NOT lean secular progressive?

And do you believe the mainstream media does NOT try to protect secular progressives?

“The three stories on that list that aren’t deranged conspiracy theories — Ayers/Dohrn, Rezko and Wright — all received months of coverage; he was questioned about them repeatedly during debates, press conferences, etc.; and all three were broken by mainstream media outlets.”

Two points on that:

1)There can be a very big difference between a) breaking a story and “coverage” of it, and b) objective, in-depth, unbiased reporting (i.e. *truthful* coverage).

2)Which mainstream media outlets broke which stories?

Okey-dokey.

1) Very intelligent people (interestingly males more than females) tend to ‘think outside the box.’

I’m curious as to your source.

Source was an anecdotal reference I have overheard generally by a couple of teachers I have known – I wasn’t trying to be specific, but for instance there is something out there to support this: htp[]s://research.collegeboard.org/sites/default/files/publications/2012/7/researchreport-1992-2-sex-differences-problem-solving-strategies-sat-math.pdf

So, basically 14.5 pages (N = 58) that are 23 years old about people who scored above 650 on a specific mathematical-skills testing instrument, and this is what you use to defend your sweeping generalization?

"High-scoring females, as a group, seem to be somewhat
more conservative in their strategies, sticking to methods
they were taught in school. This may be caused by a lack of
confidence or interest, or because of the way they learned
and think about mathematics."

To ann who never addresses anyone MEEEEEEEEEEEE

FTFY

I forgot:

To me these seem like pure ‘Hit’ pieces.

If the press makes a diligent effort to consider and report both sides of a disputed story fairly and it's newsworthy by a generally accepted standard -- ie, legitimately in the public interest in some way -- it's not a hit piece.

By those parameters, the West Point story as it appeared in Politico was a hit piece, imo.

However, the West Point story as it appeared in most of the outlets that picked it up once it broke was, in most cases, simply a story that was unfavorable to Ben Carson primarily because his response was angry, disorganized, and heavy on the fingerpointing and complaint.

If he had just said, "Believe me, to a kid living in poverty in Detroit, there's not a lot of difference between a full scholarship and free tuition. West Point calls it that in its promotional materials. And I made it perfectly clear that I only applied to Yale. I'm not going to dignify it with further comment," it would not have outlived the 24-hour news cycle.

The other stories are a little harder to address, but they're not impossible. What made them seem like 'hit pieces" was his failure to respond in a way that gave him the last word and closed the door on the subject. Or at least appeared to do so.

But that's not the media's fault. They gave him the opportunity. He decided to get outraged and storm off. That's on him.

There is simply _nothing_ here other than slander. And to me it doesn’t matter that he was/wasn’t ‘prepared’ for slander (I suspect he was expecting something), or that he could answered (IMHO he did answer). Slander is just wrong.

It would actually be libel, not slander. But it can't be either one unless (at a minimum) they knew that what they were saying was false and defamatory and/or they recklessly disregarded the possibility that it was.

And that was not the case. He said stuff. They accurately reported that he said it and raised questions about its veracity. He didn't answer them well or -- in most instances -- at all.

Again, that's not the media's fault. He should have been prepared for it.

^ I'm going to go ahead and try to fix the the triple-blockquote on this one.

-----
Okey-dokey.

1) Very intelligent people (interestingly males more than females) tend to ‘think outside the box.’

I’m curious as to your source.

Source was an anecdotal reference I have overheard generally by a couple of teachers I have known – I wasn’t trying to be specific, but for instance there is something out there to support this: htp[]s://research.collegeboard.org/sites/default/files/publications/2012/7/researchreport-1992-2-sex-differences-problem-solving-strategies-sat-math.pdf

So, basically 14.5 pages (N = 58) that are 23 years old about people who scored above 650 on a specific mathematical-skills testing instrument, and this is what you use to defend your sweeping generalization?

“High-scoring females, as a group, seem to be somewhat more conservative in their strategies, sticking to methods they were taught in school. This may be caused by a lack of confidence or interest, or because of the way they learned and think about mathematics.”

To ann who never addresses anyone MEEEEEEEEEEEE

FTFY

The "do not call list" certainly seems to need more frequent updating.

Re Narad #228
Again, this was intended to be a completely unsupported statement. I'm in no way trying to defend a 'sweeping generalization' by making a comment in a blog. Thus, my comment 'I overheard...', and 'this is anecdotal'

Take it for what its worth. For absolute clarity - some folks (non-specifically, and without any actual experimentation) have independently noticed this and made offhand comments to me as in 'humm isn't it interesting that ...'. Without much effort I was able to google and find that there is at least some evidence that the observations are not completely without merit. I didn't do exhaustive research on this topic, and I don't know if there is other evidence to support it or not. I suspect that there may be other weak studies, but that there is probably no RCT trial that would satisfy your desire to show this is a 'proven fact' with extensive footnotes. On the other hand, there isn't evidence for parachutes, and all sorts of other things. The fact that there isn't a large RCT or met-analysis for something does not indicate that something is false - it indicates unknown. And, in the absence of established high quality studies, weak data is generally better than no data.

It's an 'interesting' potentially explaining observation. That is ALL. Weak data, but better than no data.

But, if the OP or you are speculating on what makes Ben Carson or anyone else tick, I doubt that we'll ever get much beyond completely unsupported 'sweeping generalizations' anyway.

To ann who never addresses anyone #217:

I'll make an exception.

“If the mainstream media really was part of a secular progressive plot…”

Well, “plot” is a pretty powerful word, kind of like “conspiracy”, and would imply a formally communicated and orchestrated plan across all the mainstream media outlets.
I’m not saying that.

That's a fair point.

But do you believe the mainstream media does NOT lean secular progressive?

Well. The press is a secular institution. For a reason. And this is it:

If they want to stay in business, any news outlet that has a big enough audience/readership to be called "mainstream" can't lean a lot further to the left or right than most Americans who get their news from whatever part of the media marketplace that outlet is in. And they also can't offend their advertisers.

In practice, that means (a) secular/ecumenical; (b) most of the demo is always unhappy with something but rarely so disgusted that they quit reading/watching; and (c) except for very, very infrequently, neither of is going to see our political views being embraced by the mainstream print and broadcast media.

The main way that they're liberal is that to reach a lot of people they have to be inclusive wrt diversity of belief and lifestyle. But that's not really motivated by politics. It's just show business.

The exceptions on the right (eg, Fox News, the WSJ, the New York Post) tend to be more uncompromisingly on the right because Rupert Murdoch is willing to plow money into them even when it's unpopular.

MSNBC has to keep it within limits that advertisers and viewers will accept. And the news pages of the New York Times are not all that liberal. They just hew definitively left for opinion/editorial and the "[whatever] of the Times" sections.

(^^I mean "by the standards of most people." I realize that you don't see it that way. And I'm not arguing with that. I'm just using the terms "left," "right," "liberal," and "conservative" as they're conventionally understood by most people on both sides.)

And do you believe the mainstream media does NOT try to protect secular progressives?

I believe that all institutions try to protect themselves. And institutional self-interest isn't usually as straightforward as that. George W. Bush just about crushed the mainstream media and then ran back and forth over its flattened corpse for his entire first term. And the NYT was at the head of the pack saying, "Please, sir, may I have another?"

Because that was the mood of the country. C'est la vie.

But (to be fair), they're almost always generally respectful of authority once someone's in office.

“The three stories on that list that aren’t deranged conspiracy theories — Ayers/Dohrn, Rezko and Wright — all received months of coverage; he was questioned about them repeatedly during debates, press conferences, etc.; and all three were broken by mainstream media outlets.”

Two points on that:

1) There can be a very big difference between a) breaking a story and “coverage” of it, and b) objective, in-depth, unbiased reporting (i.e. *truthful* coverage).

SN, I know you hate Obama. But "objective" and "unbiased" means you can't say he's in the thrall of radical left-wing terrorists unless there's objective unbiased proof that he is.

It also means you have to acknowledge that they haven't committed any acts of radical left-wing terrorism since he was eleven years old, and that all charges against them were dropped, and so forth and so on.

Because whether you like it or not, all those things are objectively true. Same for whether you personally think they're pertinent truths or not. And there's no amount of in-depth that can change that. The only way to change it is to persuade the majority of the American people that you're right to see it the way you do and they're wrong.

Or overwhelming force. That would also work.

In any event. That aside, I agree. There can be a big difference.

To the best of my recollection, Rezko/Obama got in-depth coverage in the major dailies but not on TV, because it's kind of a weedy story.

But Wright and Ayers both got deep wide coverage everywhere. That's why he had to throw Wright overboard. Just saying "I condemn this, I strongly disagree with that" and changing the subject didn't do it.

2) Which mainstream media outlets broke which stories?

Ayers/Dohrn -- ABC News; Rezko -- the Chicago Sun-Times; Wright -- ABC News.

Rezko actually went national because Hillary brought it up during a debate.

__________

I noticed after posting that every single person I listed on the smear list at the end of #216 -- ie, Kerry, Gore, Hillary in '92, and Carson -- was running against a member of the Bush family.

Man, is it gonna be ugly if we end up with Bush v. /Clinton 2.0 (1.6.)

Stupid html tags. I meant:

But do you believe the mainstream media does NOT lean secular progressive?

Well. The press is a secular institution. For a reason. And this is it:

If they want to stay in business, any news outlet that has a big enough audience/readership to be called “mainstream” can’t lean a lot further to the left or right than most Americans who get their news from whatever part of the media marketplace that outlet is in. And they also can’t offend their advertisers.

In practice, that means (a) secular/ecumenical; (b) most of the demo is always unhappy with something but rarely so disgusted that they quit reading/watching; and (c) except for very, very infrequently, neither of is going to see our political views being embraced by the mainstream print and broadcast media.

The main way that they’re liberal is that to reach a lot of people they have to be inclusive wrt diversity of belief and lifestyle. But that’s not really motivated by politics. It’s just show business.

The exceptions on the right (eg, Fox News, the WSJ, the New York Post) tend to be more uncompromisingly on the right because Rupert Murdoch is willing to plow money into them even when it’s unpopular.

MSNBC has to keep it within limits that advertisers and viewers will accept. And the news pages of the New York Times are not all that liberal. They just hew definitively left for opinion/editorial and the “[whatever] of the Times” sections.

(^^I mean “by the standards of most people.” I realize that you don’t see it that way. And I’m not arguing with that. I’m just using the terms “left,” “right,” “liberal,” and “conservative” as they’re conventionally understood by most people on both sides.)

And do you believe the mainstream media does NOT try to protect secular progressives?

I believe that all institutions try to protect themselves. And institutional self-interest isn’t usually as straightforward as that. George W. Bush just about crushed the mainstream media and then ran back and forth over its flattened corpse for his entire first term. And the NYT was at the head of the pack saying, “Please, sir, may I have another?”

Because that was the mood of the country. C’est la vie.

But (to be fair), they’re almost always generally respectful of authority once someone’s in office.

“The three stories on that list that aren’t deranged conspiracy theories — Ayers/Dohrn, Rezko and Wright — all received months of coverage; he was questioned about them repeatedly during debates, press conferences, etc.; and all three were broken by mainstream media outlets.”

Two points on that:

1) There can be a very big difference between a) breaking a story and “coverage” of it, and b) objective, in-depth, unbiased reporting (i.e. *truthful* coverage).

SN, I know you hate Obama. But “objective” and “unbiased” means you can’t say he’s in the thrall of radical left-wing terrorists unless there’s objective unbiased proof that he is.

It also means you have to acknowledge that they haven’t committed any acts of radical left-wing terrorism since he was eleven years old, and that all charges against them were dropped, and so forth and so on.

Because whether you like it or not, all those things are objectively true. Same for whether you personally think they’re pertinent truths or not. And there’s no amount of in-depth that can change that. The only way to change it is to persuade the majority of the American people that you’re right to see it the way you do and they’re wrong.

Or overwhelming force. That would also work.

In any event. That aside, I agree. There can be a big difference.

To the best of my recollection, Rezko/Obama got in-depth coverage in the major dailies but not on TV, because it’s kind of a weedy story.

But Wright and Ayers both got deep wide coverage everywhere. That’s why he had to throw Wright overboard. Just saying “I condemn this, I strongly disagree with that” and changing the subject didn’t do it.

2) Which mainstream media outlets broke which stories?

Ayers/Dohrn — ABC News; Rezko — the Chicago Sun-Times; Wright — ABC News.

Rezko actually went national because Hillary brought it up during a debate.

__________

I noticed after posting that every single person I listed on the smear list at the end of #216 — ie, Kerry, Gore, Hillary in ’92, and Carson — was running against a member of the Bush family.

Man, is it gonna be ugly if we end up with Bush v. /Clinton 2.0 (1.6.)

Again, this was intended to be a completely unsupported statement.

Which, one may recall, was set forth as follows:

Very intelligent people (interestingly males more than females) tend to ‘think outside the box.’ They tend to look for alternative solutions to problems, rather than using traditional methods. This is a twist on Dunning-Kruger. They are more likely to challenge assumptions – even assumptions of the ‘experts’ or just because they are a ‘scientist.’ For example, nobody told Carson how to separate the twins. He had to trust himself to literally ‘make this up’ from internal understanding that he trusted.

It took you a while to backpedal to what you "intended":

Source was an anecdotal reference I have overheard generally by a couple of teachers I have known – I wasn’t trying to be specific, but for instance there is something out there to support this....

To ann who still doesn’t address anyone #231:

“The exceptions on the right (eg, Fox News, the WSJ, the New York Post) tend to be more uncompromisingly on the right because Rupert Murdoch is willing to plow money into them even when it’s unpopular.”

So, I guess Fox News and the WSJ are unpopular, losing business ventures kept afloat only by madman Murdoch.

“MSNBC has to keep it within limits that advertisers and viewers will accept.”

Now THAT is one that seems to be kept afloat regardless of its dismal ratings.

“And the news pages of the New York Times are not all that liberal.”

Not all that liberal? Yea. Just kind of liberal.
Why should they be liberal AT ALL? How about NEUTRAL? You know, objective/unbiased/truthful/just-the-facts-ma’am?

“George W. Bush just about crushed the mainstream media and then ran back and forth over its flattened corpse for his entire first term. And the NYT was at the head of the pack saying, “Please, sir, may I have another?””

I mustn’t have heard that right. Could you repeat?

I guess I DID hear that right.
???????????????????????????

“SN, I know you hate Obama. But “objective” and “unbiased” means you can’t say he’s in the thrall of radical left-wing terrorists unless there’s objective unbiased proof that he is.”

Correct, you wouldn’t report in the *straight news* pages that he’s *in the thrall of* radical left-wing terrorists.
However, you MIGHT report his upbringing by, and frequent association with, radical left-wing, er, “socialist” types like his mother, grandparents, his father (FROM whom he got his dreams), his father figure Frank Marshall Davis, John Drew, Charles Ogletree, Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn. Or with felon Tony Rezko.
You MIGHT report how his upbringing, and frequent associations, are consistent with his “transformative” statements like “spread the wealth around” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoqI5PSRcXM

Take it for what its worth. For absolute clarity – some folks (non-specifically, and without any actual experimentation) have independently noticed this and made offhand comments to me as in ‘humm isn’t it interesting that …’. Without much effort I was able to google and find that there is at least some evidence that the observations are not completely without merit.

Which I for one didn't challenge, at all. I pointed out there is at least some evidence to the contrary, and beyond.... So any postulating about what might result from such a discrepancy in thinking processes, is opinioning.

Your original didn't read it as such, but I appreciate the clarifications, while adding that one shouldn't extrapolate from math problems to challenges a practicing doctor might face. Couldn't locate the study but I remember reading a couple of newspaper articles about one that said basically the opposite of your anecdote, that in demanding professions women were better at out-of-the-box improvising and challenging past experiences, whereas men were faster in their decision making and relied more on past experience and individual skill. But, until I bother trying to locate it (read the articles 6-10 years ago, possibly from Sweden) this is purely anecdotal also.

there is probably no RCT trial that would satisfy your desire to show this is a ‘proven fact’ with extensive footnotes. On the other hand, there isn’t evidence for parachutes,

There is, in fact, evidence for parachutes (me for one, having survived not one but two exits from a flying airplane) but not RCTs. While randomized controlled trials are the gold standard for many types of studies, they are not the only sort of evidence, and often enough, not the only sort of absolutely convincing evidence, as in the case of parachutes.

/pedantry

The fact that there isn't a large RCT or met-analysis for something does not indicate that something is false – it indicates unknown.

False. There are other, often more appropriate study designs, providing equally rigorous and convincing evidence. I shouldn't have to explain this to someone who is "a physician with an EE background (I tend to understand science and medicine pretty well and, I’m brighter than ‘average’)".

And, in the absence of established high quality studies, weak data is generally better than no data.

(See Noevo in #220) I’m quite interested in exchange of ideas. See for example the exchanging on this 2,100+ comment thread:

Which is the same thread I (and I believe others here) would offer as evidence that See Noevo isn't.

Why should they be liberal AT ALL? How about NEUTRAL? You know, objective/unbiased/truthful/just-the-facts-ma’am?

Says the man who uses Breitbart as a news source.

Also, the "And, in the absence of established high quality studies, weak data is generally better than no data." shouldn't be there, as it's a discarded part of a quote from Larry's post.

Why should they be liberal AT ALL?

The media industry seek to attract and retain customers. Some will cater to a specific base, but those who seek a larger audience will try to appeal to common emotions.
Plus, there is something known as "don't shot the ambulance". Most news anchors/editorial boards don't want to appear as insensitive assh0les.

So they will run their story trying to factor as much sensationalism and human factor as possible. So they will talk about unfairness, poverty, loss of a social situation (jobs, fame...), people helping one another (or not), the brutality of society in general, little dogs and cats ran over by cars...
For some, these are all "liberal" topics or point-of-views.

In reality, mainstream media are not so much liberal as they are a mix of distorted romanticism and black-and-white humanism. And as ann pointed above, media who want to address a large base have to be as much all-encompassing as possible. Which means talking about all forms of religions, sexual orientations and so on in a non-negative way (except in cases of extremism/belief-guided crimes).
Which again, for some people, is a "liberal" point-of-view.

These people ask for neutrality but nothing short of a judgemental report.will be neutral enough. Because they regard any accepting/sympathetic point-of-view as already a biased point-of-view.
They are not completely wrong. True neutrality doesn't exist. As Frank Herbert said, there is no way to transmit information without judging it. Just by reporting it, you give it value.

gaist@236

Which is the same thread I (and I believe others here) would offer as evidence that See Noevo isn’t.

How deluded do you need to be to think otherwise? The constant stream of "I'm not talking to you" and then "see? No one can challenge what I'm saying" is rather contrary to exchange of ideas.

This is also the same thread where See Noevo emitted this gem:

How about the possibility that homosexuality is evil?

Yup, See Noevo is hateful, bigotted, and absolutely entrenched in his far right beliefs. I say far right because it's not about religion for him, religion is just a tool to justify his beliefs when they happen to coincide. Also in that thread was See Noevo claiming to know better than the pope.

Sometimes writing someone off as a "bozo" is a useful shortcut. You can sift through the sh!tstream looking for good ideas but the return on inveatment is so low your time is probably better spent elsewhere.

So, I guess Fox News and the WSJ are unpopular, losing business ventures kept afloat only by madman Murdoch.

No, they're both profitable. Fox has also been innovative and influential. And the WSJ has actually done better since the Newscorp acquisition, although that's not because of politics, it's because they dragged themselves into the 21rst century and built the brand online.

That's not what I meant. The key words were "even when it's unpopular."

That's always been the case for the New York Post. It's not profitable. But they just keep doing what they're doing anyway. Same for Fox News. For the first eight years or so, it was not a success. Now it is. But whether their numbers are declining or increasing, they just keep doing what they're doing.

That's unusual in the United States; less so in the UK. But the whole picture is different there, because they have state-sponsored media. So everybody who's not that is frankly partisan.

In short: That wasn't an insult.

What I was trying to say is that the media outlets you regard as "liberal" aren't the way they are because they have a political agenda. They're that way because they have to cleave more or less to the political middle of their audience/readership, which shifts over time.

Murdoch, on the other hand, sticks with Murdoch's politics no matter what. So does Mort Zuckerman with Mort Zuckerman's politics. But US News and the Daily News aren't much of a media empire. And neither they nor he is very left-wing. There isn't really an equivalent to Murdoch on the left.

Why should they be liberal AT ALL? How about NEUTRAL? You know, objective/unbiased/truthful/just-the-facts-ma’am?

As most people understand those words, they are.

However, you MIGHT report his upbringing by, and frequent association with, radical left-wing, er, “socialist” types like his mother, grandparents, his father (FROM whom he got his dreams), his father figure Frank Marshall Davis, John Drew, Charles Ogletree, Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn. Or with felon Tony Rezko.

As I noted earlier, the three of those that aren't deranged conspiracy theories did get reported. In an objective, unbiased and factual manner, as those words are understood by just about everybody who uses them.

What you want is something else. An objective, unbiased report on Tony Rezko's association with Obama would have to note that he hosted a multi-million-dollar fundraiser for George W. Bush, which is -- by an objective, unbiased standard -- more than he did for Obama. For example.

Why? Because it says something that's objectively important about Tony Rezko. That's why. Just saying "Obama! Felons! Corruption! Burn him!" as if he were the only one would be biased.

Ummmm, Ann, we do not have state sponsored media here...

Ummmm, Ann, we do not have state sponsored media here…

Huh? What about the BBC?

Sorry for Wiki, but:

The BBC is established under a Royal Charter[9] and operates under its Agreement with the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport.[10] Its work is funded principally by an annual television licence fee[11] which is charged to all British households, companies, and organisations using any type of equipment to receive or record live television broadcasts.[12] The fee is set by the British Government, agreed by Parliament,[13] and used to fund the BBC's extensive radio, TV, and online services covering the nations and regions of the UK. From 1 April 2014 it also funds the BBC World Service, launched in 1932, which provides comprehensive TV, radio, and online services in Arabic, and Persian, and broadcasts in 28 languages.

These people ask for neutrality but nothing short of a judgemental report.will be neutral enough. Because they regard any accepting/sympathetic point-of-view as already a biased point-of-view.
They are not completely wrong. True neutrality doesn’t exist. As Frank Herbert said, there is no way to transmit information without judging it. Just by reporting it, you give it value.

I have heard of a few places have judged if they are getting reasonably close to neutral when each side lodges nearly equally passionate complaints about how biased the report is for the other side.

The if you get equal but opposite letters to the editor you are doing your job appropriately thing.

If Obama's responsible for his parents' beliefs, then Dennis Wilson is a mass murderer.

The BBC is supposed to be neutral, and generally achieves this IMO. It isn't state mouthpiece in that sense. We have other TV companies, of course, but I can't think of any TV station that I think of as having a particular political bent as Fox does in the US - even Sky tries to offer political bias. Newspapers are different, with clear political affiliations.

Incidentally, I wonder what overlap there is between the various understandings people here have of what "liberal" means.

To ann #241:

“What I was trying to say is that the media outlets you regard as “liberal” aren’t the way they are because they have a political agenda. They’re that way because they have to cleave more or less to the political middle of their audience/readership, which shifts over time.”

You present a one-way street:
The liberal audience/readership drives the media outlets to become liberal.

I suspect more of a two-way street to some extent; a ‘vicious cycle’ to some extent:
An *already* liberal media influences an initially less-liberal audience/readership to become *more* liberal; the media-caused increasing liberality of the audience/readership inspires the media outlets to greater heights, and disclosures, of liberality. Whether a vicious cycle or “positive” feedback loop, the media becomes *more* liberal, or at least becomes more likely to admit the liberality that was always there.

P.S.
I wonder if any surveys have been done of MSM newsroom political donations. I have a feeling that, as with academia, the overwhelming majority of the newsroom folks’ money goes to Democrats.

Sheesh - "even Sky tries to avoid political bias" - I can't even blame autocorrect, just my brain.

"The BBC is supposed to be neutral, and generally achieves this IMO."

There is no such thing as a news media outlet that is "neutral" or "objective", whether state-run or not. As long as human beings are involved, the idea is a joke.

Recently I was reading "The Fiery Cross", a history of the Ku Klux Klan and an excellent book. A reviewer blurb on the back calls it "an objective history". Of course it isn't (it contains scathing condemnations of the KKK and its leaders) nor could an accurate history of the organization ever be "objective".

The most we can ask of any news organization is balance within reason, which does not include giving equal time or sometimes any platform at all to destructive loons.

Part of the problem is that many accusations of bias are about someone reporting facts that are inconvenient for one's side. For example, our local newspaper got a scathing letter for daring to report the number of casualties from the second Iraq war.

ann wrote
“The main way that [mainstream media is] liberal is that to reach a lot of people they have to be inclusive wrt diversity of belief and lifestyle. But that’s not really motivated by politics. It’s just show business.”

It's just show business. Definitely some truth in that.
And those in “show business” are almost invariably liberal.

Speaking of the treatment of truth in media coverage, here are some interesting bits from show business, from the movie “Absence of Malice”:

Sarah Wylie: I need to know how to describe your relationship with Gallagher. Mac said to quote you directly. You can say whatever you want.

Megan Carter: Just... say we were involved.

Sarah Wylie: That's true, isn't it?

Megan Carter: No. But it's accurate.
…………….
Here’s another scene:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SGe-IywHXg

The BBC is supposed to be neutral, and generally achieves this IMO. It isn’t state mouthpiece in that sense.

I (and I think ann) hadn't meant to imply that it was a "state mouthpiece," only that it is "state sponsored" in the sense that it is publicly funded. In fact, I think ann was saying that that makes it more likely to be more-or-less neutral than privately funded media.

The US has a similar thing, if much smaller and worse funded, in PBS and NPR. These are in fact believed to be strongly "liberally biased" by many - I'm curious, do right-wingers in the UK feel the same way about the Beeb?

I'm a great fan of the BBC World Service, incidentally. It plays on the local public radio station at night.

To Krebiozen #247:

“Incidentally, I wonder what overlap there is between the various understandings people here have of what “liberal” means.”

On the flip side, Jay Nordlinger wrote a piece yesterday titled “What Is Conservatism?”
I posted the following comment to it:

[At a top level, I’d say “conservatism” is a belief in *conserving* the things and principles that are good - more specifically, the things and principles which have been shown to work well in upholding the inherent dignity of human beings and in bettering the human condition.

At a more detailed level, Jay provides a pretty good summary:
“I believe that to be a conservative is to be for limited government. Personal freedom. The rule of law. The Constitution, and adherence to it. Federalism. Equality under the law. Equality of opportunity. Relatively light taxation. Relatively light regulation. Free enterprise. Property rights. Free trade. Civil society. The right to work. A strong defense. National security. National sovereignty. Human rights. A sound, non-flaky educational curriculum. School choice. A sensible stewardship over the land, as opposed to extreme environmentalism. Pluralism. Colorblindness. Toleration. E pluribus unum. Patriotism. Our Judeo-Christian heritage. Western civilization.

I want to throw in, too, the right to life. (I have said, over the years, “Show me where a man stands on abortion and Israel, and you have shown me all I need to know.”)”]

It is amazing sn how few of those "items of conservatism" you have shown yourself to possess (as we reflect on the racism, bigotry, misogyny, hatred of other religions, and your lack of education).

It is also amusing how you try to paint President Obama as a communist terrorist when it was the previous president's policies that destroyed the economy in the early 2000s with his foolish tax cuts and refusal to pay for 2 wars (and inability to execute either of them in any meaningful way).

Your ignorance and personal lack of being tied to reality are both boundless.

"Reality has a well-known liberal bias." - Stephen Colbert, The Colbert Report

Sure, neurosurgeons can believe dumb stuff, just like anyone else. But I have one question… how many neurosurgeons continually recall their lives in 'parables', ans have giant paintings of THEMSELVES hanging in their hallway… one of which features them standing next to Christ, in matching beards, clothes and even matching complexions (just in case you didn't get the 'inference')?!

Continuing with the concepts of media and liberalism…

here’s an interesting 6-minute bit on media coverage, recorded at one of the wackiest and least-free spaces in America – the typical college campus.

The woman heard in the beginning and then seen at the end shouting
"Hey, who wants to help me get this reporter out of here. I need some muscle over here!"
is Melissa Click. Melissa’s a Mizzuo professor who teaches about things like Lady Gaga and “Fifty Shades of Grey.”

http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2015/11/who_is_melissa_click_mizzou_me…

I could probably title this “Where liberalism is headed”.

I've had enough of SN for this round. He's gone back into the Do Not See bin.

Melissa’s a Mizzuo professor

Since you're merely link-spamming, it shouldn't be too hard to at least make an attempt at spelling.

And the WSJ has actually done better since the Newscorp acquisition, although that’s not because of politics, it’s because they dragged themselves into the 21rst century and built the brand online.

The WSJ just did a rather scathing examination of some of Ben Carson's stories.

Left out the link (warning: paywall).

http://www.wsj.com/articles/ben-carsons-past-faces-deeper-questions-144…

^ BTW, Cynthia Parker is also a resident of Columbia, MO. And I have a friend who's trapped in that hole as a result of a custody agreement with her philandering ex-husband.

The BBC is supposed to be neutral, and generally achieves this IMO. It isn’t state mouthpiece in that sense.

"State-sponsored" was intended as a value-neutral term.

My point was that countries (such as Great Britain and France) that have ...I don't know what to call it besides "state-sponsored" news media typically also have newspapers that are frankly, comfortably partisan. Because the "neutral, objective" slot is already filled.

The concept of compulsory objective newspaper reporting for all newspapers because that's what newspaper reporting is, objective, is an American thing.

Murdoch comes from a different tradition. That's all I was saying. I didn't mean one was better or worse than the other. It was just an observation.

I declare this derail over.

(Meaning: I'm sorry I made an exception.)

(You're in luck See, two days in a row... I like being paid overtime to wait by the computer.)

"Had your fill yet?" The spectator asks his companion. "We might still catch a movie, or something..."
"Absolutely incredible." the companion says.
"You want to stay? Really?"
"No. No!" the companion looks shocked. "nooo I don't."
"Thank God" the spectator whispers, standing up.

"You look familiar..." See Noevo says, squinting over the stage lights.
Realizing See is addressing him, the spectator turns to look at him with a pained expression. "We've met." he hesitantly admits.
When See Noevo continues squinting at him, the spectator adds "I suffered through your last show, at least until you stormed off, after which you came pestering me at the bus stop..."

(silence)

"Doesn't ring a bell." See says, finally.
"I missed my bus trying to help you find Darwin four afterwards..."
"What do you mean?" See hisses vehemently, "Darwin's not missing!" See pats the plushie monkey tucked under his belt. "He's right here!"
"Umm..." says the spectator. "Ooookay..."
"So you must have been mistaken." See reasons.
"I certainly hope so..." the spectator says. "I gave you back your judgmental See-puppet..."
"You!" See suddenly shrieks, pointing the spectator with an accusatory finger. "You! You... stalker! You're obsessed with me!"
"What? No, I tried to avoid you, rememb-"
"A-ha! Too cowardly to have a real exchange of ideas!"
"You're the one who started listing people you'd ignore from now on because they had arguments you couldn't refute."
"And for good reason!" See snaps back, "pretending they didn't recognize my greatness, petty whining cowards, getting stuck in minor irrelevant details, like the main stream media with good doctor Carson, weak angry writing hit pieces, trying to ruin America..."
"I don't think they're hit pieces" says someone from the audience. "I think his possible lies ought to be investigated, like everyone else's."
"Never!" See shouts. "Liberal mainstream media is out to smear him! Ruin him! They're nothing but lies designed to turn us into liberal communists!"

(silence)

"Mainstream media like Fox?" someone says.
"I doubt the Wall Street Journal has a communist agenda..." someone else adds, sending See Noevo into another fit of rage.
"Fox and Wall Street Journal are liberal mouthpieces for Obama and his criminal thugs! Hating honest Christian values like the ones I personify! They must hate me most of all, that's why I can't remember a single news I didn't disagree with."
"That doesn't even make sense..."
"I'm a threat to secular progressive movement, like Ben Carson, em dee, that's why they fear and hate me..."
"Don't be ridicu-"
"I know what media is like! I've seen a movie about it, they're all liberals, hating the Constitution and human rights and toleration! Equal rights for all! Everything conservatives stand for! " See Noevo nods at his own words, appreciatively. "Ruining our youth with Lady Gaga and Fifty shades of liberalism."
"Conservatives like you?" asks the spectator.
"Indeed!" See nods, thumbs hooked into belt loops.
"So equal rights and liberties for everybody?"
"Certainly."
"Gays too?"
"Don't be an idiot, everybody knows faggots are evil!"

(silence)

"I rest my case." the spectator says, sitting back down.
"I thought you wanted to leave?" the companion whispers.
"What's the quote... All it takes for evil to triumph..." the spectator whispers. "It's a shitty job but someone's gotta-"
The companion points at several lights being held up here and there in the audience, bluish rectangles casting a faint glow on several faces.
"Cameras..." the companion grins. "At least he's making a fool of himself in public. A cautionary tale."
On stage, See Noevo is fuming, more so as he realizes the spectator he was just castigating isn't paying attention to him. In what he thinks is a a solemn, accusatory tone, he says "I bet you're some sort of deviant baby-killing Palestine-loving anti-semitic queer, aren't you... I can tell these things, it's a gift I have..."

I (and I think ann) hadn’t meant to imply that it was a “state mouthpiece,” only that it is “state sponsored” in the sense that it is publicly funded. In fact, I think ann was saying that that makes it more likely to be more-or-less neutral than privately funded media.

Yes. Exactly. Well said.

(Missed it before.)

Let’s watch Ben Carson & company in the debate tonight on Fox Business Channel!

I think the focus will be on economic issues.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade pact may be one of the subjects. And today, President Obama seemed to be encouraging you and me to read the TPP:
"Along with the text of the agreement, we've posted detailed materials to help explain it. It's an unprecedented degree of transparency — and it's the right thing to do… And I expect that, after the American people and Congress have an opportunity for months of careful review and consultation, Congress will approve it, and I'll have the chance to sign it into law."

So, I may be away from here for the next couple months, reading the thing.
I wonder if any of the debaters tonight have read it? It’s pretty big, according to the pic in this Tweet:
https://twitter.com/senatorsessions

He just hit it out of the park on his first question.

Could not have been better.

So, I may be away from here for the next couple months, reading the thing.

Hey, don't hurry. You want to make sure you read it thoroughly. Take a year or two. We're okay with that.

JP,

I (and I think ann) hadn’t meant to imply that it was a “state mouthpiece,” only that it is “state sponsored” in the sense that it is publicly funded. In fact, I think ann was saying that that makes it more likely to be more-or-less neutral than privately funded media.

I wasn't really disagreeing with you or ann, I'm just never quite sure how people see the UK and a "state-sponsored media" has a faint Orwellian ring to it :-) Since the BBC is at the mercy of government to some extent, I imagine there must be some motivation not to bite the hand..., but it isn't as obvious, to me anyway, as something like Fox News' biases. I don't think you would find the BBC biased towards AGW denial for example.

The US has a similar thing, if much smaller and worse funded, in PBS and NPR.

Thank FSM for NPR and PBS; the paucity of an liberal/independent US (and global) media is troubling. I haven't spent much time in the US, but find the TV fascinating when I'm there. A foreign culture that speaks a language I am more or less fluent in - what's not to like for an amateur anthropologist like myself? That said, much mainstream USian culture is hardly foreign to Brits (or anyone else but North Koreans, I guess).

These are in fact believed to be strongly “liberally biased” by many – I’m curious, do right-wingers in the UK feel the same way about the Beeb?

Probably, though I don't know too many right-wingers. I hear more complaints that the BBC is too right-wing and pro-government, with perhaps some justification. The BBC is generally uncontroversial, which inevitably p!sses some people off.

I’m a great fan of the BBC World Service, incidentally. It plays on the local public radio station at night.

And I'm very happy to pay for part of it with my license fee :-) (though I think overseas sales of Doctor Who funds most of it). I think it's still true that the BBC radio (but not TV) archive is open to anyone (works using a Canadian VPN anyway) - beware, it's a serious time sink but there's some really good stuff there.

Years ago, I found myself stranded in the Sahara for a few days with some nomads (a long story I have related here before), one of them told me he listened to the BBC World Service, which I assume broadcasts in Arabic (I doubt it does Berber). The only English words he knew were "hello, how are you? very pleased to meet you" (or words to that effect), but his accent was impeccable, which was amusing, coming from a guy who looked like he had stepped out of the Arabian Nights.

My rough ratings of last night's performances:
Cruz: A
Fiorina: A
Carson: B+
Rubio: B+
Trump: B
Paul: B
Bush: C
Kasich: C-

I don't think Dunning-Kruger (which I remember by thinking of convicted pseudoskeptic Brian Dunning and Freddy Kruger) is the only explanatory factor. I think that there's a related issue.

It's the fallacy of false appeal to authority, but looking at that fallacy through the other end of the telescope, the false authority thinking he's an authority outside his field, rather than the actual appeal.

Thank you for contributing to the body of works which examine current political issues without insult, name-calling, or bombast. And even your comment train doesn't descend into the mud; remarkable.

One tiny tip from a person old enough to remember my mother's hand-cranked washing machine: you went through the wringer, not ringer, of internship. (4th paragraph from the end). A more vivid image that way, isn't it?!

you went through the wringer, not ringer, of internship. A more vivid image that way, isn’t it?!

I would rather not revive mental images of de-gloving injuries

herr doktor:

Remember that one of the most frequent causes of degloving injuries is a finger ring being forcibly removed by getting caught on a fence or in heavy machinery. "Ringer" might not be so incorrect after all.

Hmmm, when my then five year old sister got her hand caught in a washer wringer, my mother reversed it to get her out, and then sought out a medical clinic in a Spanish speaking city where we had lived in for less than a month (Caracas, 1968).

With help she found one, and it turned out my sister had no broken bones but lots of bruising. We attributed it to her tiny hands, and not forcing it out of the wringer. Then it was on to the next problem of that little girl thinking she would walk through glass sliding doors, again saved by being tiny and someone nearby to drag her away.

Descriptions of de-gloving by vivid imagery-conjurer Stephen King, gave me a case of the horrors for weeks.

At any rate speaking of horrors, I had the dubious pleasure of listening to Mike Adams's 12 minute diatribe
( @Natural News) in which he narrates why his town would be immune to events such as those which have just transpired in Paris.
It so typifies his methods- opportunistically using tragedy to further his own despicable aims.

Right, guns are the solution. Ignorant fool.

Then it was on to the next problem of that little girl thinking she would walk through glass sliding doors, again saved by being tiny and someone nearby to drag her away.

There is a story (which MAY involve baby Jamie) behind why the sliding glass front doors at my maternal grandmother's house have some little pictures of pears and birds affixed to them.

I ran through a floor-to-ceiling glass window when I was eight. I went right through it and fell flat on my face. The top half of the window then came down like a guillotine blade. Fortunately I was out of the way. The weirdest thing was I ended up with only a few superficial cuts on my hands.
I have no idea why I am still alive.

Oy - that's lucky. I was small enough, clumsy enough, and slow enough that I just repeatedly (not sure how many times) kept trying to walk through the glass doors and smooshing my face into it. My grandma was a pretty fastidious housekeeper, I guess. Those Norwegians.

JP: "... have some little pictures of pears and birds affixed to them."

These doors had decorative stencils already affixed. It did not matter to that little girl who seemed to like to do things at lightening speeds. As it turns out she did run track later in life, when she had also gained a bit of safety sense.

I was small enough, clumsy enough, and slow enough that I just repeatedly (not sure how many times) kept trying to walk through the glass doors and smooshing my face into it.

Sheesh, all I did was get up in the middle of the night and consume MSG straight from the canister of Accent.

I suppose I once had to crawl into a log while being pelted with rocks, and there were all the 120 V electrical shocks,* but still.

* Also, papas, please teach your kids what the clutch is for before having them test out second-hand riding mowers.

Sheesh, all I did was get up in the middle of the night and consume MSG straight from the canister of Accent.

I was known to shake the "steak seasoning" salt stuff out into my hand and eat it. And also munch on dry spaghetti. Actually, one of the favorite snacks of my brother and I was crushed-up dry ramen with the season packet sprinkled on it. (We were often more-or-less unsupervised, especially in the summer.)

In fact, as a toddler, I apparently had quite a taste for dry cat food. I am tempted to say that I was like a little stoned person, just wandering around and enjoying any sort of sensual experiences I came upon, but it may well just be that I inherited my father's enthusiastic enjoyment of pretty much anything edible.*

Speaking of lawn mowers, there is a story about how I was none-too-bright operating one one time, and could have lost some fingers if I wasn't lucky. (I don't remember it altogether, but something about a grass block in the blades, and not turning it off beforehand or something.) "Awful smart about some thing and awful dumb about others," as they used to say.

*I have heard stores about "food" that he prepared at logging camps.

^ some things.

Just to be clear, I wasn't reaching to where the blades were or anything; there was a rubber grass-trap type thing that I was emptying.

I have a story, or more correctly two.
Years ago, my parents' house was being remodeled. I hadn't moved out. I was jogging though to my room, it was dark and I didn't realise the sliding doors were closed.
BUMP! Ooof! Clatter.
I ran head first into the glass panel (which thankfully was armoured glass), and fell backwards, knocking over something. My parents hurried through to check. I was sore, but otherwise fine.
A few years later, my father walked into the exact same door. It also didn't break, but he got a lovely black eye. It was his birthday a few days later, so my mother bought him a birthday card that had a picture of the Blue Hole, a marine sinkhole.
The door in question now has stickers on it to prevent a recurrence.

From the brain of Ben Carson, word salad stylist:

http://commondreams.org/further/2015/11/17/if-we-get-out-there-and-real…

Oh Ben. Now his own advisers are admitting he has a hard time grasping foreign policy. And then there's this:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/ben-carson-refugee-map-fail

Ah, the politics of news. This is stuff I know, as it was a core topic of my PhD studies, and a case study therein was my original plan for a dissertation topic. (I changed it, but still had a couple chapters that dealt with news.)

DB: 'Balance' is always a crock, as is the notion of 'objectivity' that governs it. Obedience to these principles has done more to obscure truth in news than any overt partisan bias. In practice, both principles are fundamentally conservative, in that they inevitably function in favor of the reigning powers-that-be. The most we can ask of journalism is 'fairness' in its subjectivity.

The whole 'liberal media' thing is also a crock, based on nonsensical definitions and the worst sort of cherry picking of evidence. The definitional issue is a crude false dichotomy: if a news source does not fit the pundit's definition of 'conservative', it is considered to be 'liberal'. The cherry-picking is a focus on the reporters of the high-circulation 'prestige' publications and networks. If you look at ALL of the 'MSM' – including the regional newspapers and local broadcast stations (especially radio, which is filled with syndicated far-right talk shows)– and ALL of the decision-makers, including editors and publishers, factoring for relative power – to the extent news has any ideological tilt, it lands on the right-hand side of the political divide.

But the larger flaw in this thinking, in critiques of news mounted from both left and right, is the assumption that news has some hidden partisan content, that it's fundamentally ideological in nature. Over all, news is more anti-ideological, subverting any political agendas in favor of empty spectacle and sensationalism. It destroys sense more than it creates sense one way or the other.

ann: The good thing about state-sponsored media is that it's LESS likely to be 'neutral' than advertising-supported news. That is, to the extent publicly funded media IS 'neutral' this is typically achieved by including different perspectives over the range of programming as a whole. There is much less demand that each individual program, journalist or story must be 'neutral' in the sense of framing within 'objectivity'.

'Objectivity' in news is a late 19th-century innovation, that only became a norm in the early 20th century. It's origins were all about sustainable profit – 'objective' coverage pisses off the fewest advertisers, generating higher ad revenue for a mass-circulation publication directed at an audience with some diversity of viewpoints. (See Michael Schudson, Discovering The News.)

What has happened over the last 3-4 decades is a decline of all forms of mass-circulation media as cable TV and the internet have enabled advertisers to target fragmented segments of the buying public with messages that fit whatever political or a-political bubble they may inhabit. There's no longer as compelling a need for a content environment congruent with 'appealing to everybody'.

In general, the wider the audience-base, the more 'inoffensive' the content. Murdoch's NewsCorp has massive holdings, and plays the game well at every level. While he's best known for his Tory tabloids and Fox News, the majority of his profit still comes from international news services that largely avoid controversy, and suck at the teats of whoever is in power in the markets at hand, regardless of what Rupert may think of their ideology...

Orac,

I found your article pretty entertaining. As a relatively well educated person, I have often found myself guarding against the Drummer-Kruger effect, though I didn't know it had a name before reading this article. In fact, occasionally I try to find new ideas to add to my knowledge base which is why I stumbled upon your blog. I disagree with pretense of this statement, " Indeed, many of the people most invested in 'integrating' alternative medicine (i.e., quackery) into medicine are incredibly intelligent physicians." I'm not trained in alternative medicine, but I don't think you can dismiss it all as quackery.

Three points:
A. Many starting points for medicines (and other uses) have been based on natural sources, so on a viewpoint that X has A, and A is biologically active, these things can have therapeutic value.
B. Non-small molecules (DNA, RNA strands) can have interesting activities that are difficult to isolate and subsequently quantifiy. Just because you cant find an active small molecule doesn't mean there isn't activity in some component that is difficult to find.
C. Synergistic effects are important, but very difficult to quantify. Ask honeybees. However, they aren't native to the US, and we all know, "If you aren't from here, you can get out!" Ask honeybees in Europe.

Many starting points for medicines (and other uses) have been based on natural sources, so on a viewpoint that X has A, and A is biologically active, these things can have therapeutic value.

Which is of course why there's an entire field of evidence based medical research dedicated to identifying the active ingredient A natural source X might produce--it's called pharmacognosy, and there's nothing alternative about it. It allows us to produce drug products that are free of contaminants and contain a known dosage of the active ingredient that's beneficial. There's a reason, after all, we've moved to taking aspirin tablets for headaches and no longer rely on willow bark tree.

Just because you cant find an active small molecule doesn’t mean there isn’t activity in some component that is difficult to find.

The problem isn't that it's difficult to detect and isolate an active components from natural product remedies, but that with rare exception ( e.g. willow bark tea again) those remedies themselves do exhibit the activity claimed.

Just because you cant find an active small molecule doesn’t mean there isn’t activity in some component that is difficult to find.

First, of course, you have to demonstrate that the effects exist before you would bother trying to determine which component produces the effect.

Synergistic effects are important, but very difficult to quantify.

While there certainly can be synergistic effects, there's a need to actually prove that such effects exist before claiming them.

I disagree with pretense of this statement, ” Indeed, many of the people most invested in ‘integrating’ alternative medicine (i.e., quackery) into medicine are incredibly intelligent physicians.” I’m not trained in alternative medicine, but I don’t think you can dismiss it all as quackery.

... I think you meant "premise", possibly? Rather than "pretense"?

I think Orac is engaging in a bit of hyperbole through simplification with the phrase "alternative medicine (i.e., quackery)". The literal meaning of "i.e." would translate this statement to "all alternative medicine is quackery". Even if we employ the principle of charity and allow quackery to simply mean "medicine without actual value", and not require the implication of anyone's conscious fraud, we still can't state definitively that there is no value anywhere in alternative medicine.

Here's the thing, though: we also cannot state that there is value anywhere in alternative medicine. Some people think that because there have been some cases where a substance or practice recommended by "ancient wisdom" turned out to have value (not always the value that was claimed for it, or anything near) that means that there must be other such cases just waiting to be discovered. This logical-seeming premise is wrong. If you reach into a jar and draw a large number of white pebbles and one black pebble, is there any guarantee that there are more black pebbles in the jar, waiting to be withdrawn on future turns? No, there isn't. For all we know, we've already drawn the last.

Considering that no one has a crystal ball capable of giving us absolutely accurate answers from the future, I think Orac's assessment must be taken as a hyperbolic expression of a true fact: very little real actual medicine has come out of "alternative medicine", and the amounts only get smaller the more dubious alternative practices you allow under the "alternative medicine" banner.

Matthew: "I’m not trained in alternative medicine, but I don’t think you can dismiss it all as quackery."

List the ones that are not quackery. Not in generalities like "natural sources", "non-small molecules" and "synergistic effects", but actual names of the particular "alternative" medicine.

Would it be turmeric, vitamin C, colloidal silver, homeopathy, acupuncture, or what? Though before you post with those details, be sure to see if they were discussed here earlier by using the handy dandy search box on the upper right of this page. Thank you in advance.

Registration Opens For European Skeptics Conference

aardvarchaeology — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 11:31:55 +0000

Registration Opens For European Skeptics Conference

Registration has opened for the 15th European Skeptics Conference. Hie thee there and register NOW, because there's only 400 tickets!

Here's the confirmed (still evolving) line-up:

Anna Bäsén (Sweden): Undercover Health Journalism
Chris French (UK): Psychological Perspectives on Paranormal Belief and Experience
Maria Berglund (Sweden): Våra opålitliga hjärnor: hur fel vi uppfattar världen och hur fel vi tänker om det vi uppfattar
Dénis Caroti (France): CorteX and Chomsky's Wish
Kendrick Frazier (US) of the Committe for Skeptical Inquiry: title to be announced.
Christer Fuglesang (Sweden): ESA: Did You Know That You Too Are Co-Owner of a Space Agency?
D.J. Grothe (US) of the James Randi Educational Foundation: Critical-thinking Teaching Materials for Schools
Kristine Hjulstad (Norway): How Magicians Fool Our Brains
Catherine de Jong (Netherlands): Pseudoscientific Addiction Treatments
Max Maven (US) does magic
Michael "Marsh" Marshall (UK): Bad News. PR and Spin in the Media
Beatrice Mautino (Italy): Solving Mysteries to Learn Science (and Vice Versa)
Hans Rosling and Ola Rosling (Sweden): A Fact-based Worldview Through Animated Data
Hayley Stevens (UK): The Things That Go Bump In The Night: A Look At The True Menace Of The Ghost Hunt
Tom Stone (Sweden): The Art of Deception
Barbro Walker (Germany): A Close Look at Brain Gym
Tomasz Witkowski (Poland): Is Psychology a Cargo-Cult Science?

aardvarchaeology Thu, 03/21/2013 - 07:31

Tags

Maybe potential guests from adjacent countries could get in touch here and check the opportunities for car-pooling? Might not be realistic for Brits, but people in northern Germany could swing by others in Denmark, and share the travel cost.

(OT) We are recent Africans! "Out of Africa date brought forward" http://phys.org/news/2013-03-africa-date-brought.html (for geologists 95 000 years = yesterday)

Does all this blogging about quackery really accomplish anything?

oracknows — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 05:00:19 +0000

Does all this blogging about quackery really accomplish anything?

Believe it or not, after nearly eight years blogging and around five years before that cutting my skeptical teeth on that vast and wild (and now mostly deserted and fallow) wilderness that was Usenet, I have occasionally wondered whether what I'm doing is worthwhile. Sometime around 1998, after I first discovered Holocaust denial on Usenet, and a year or so after that, I found the home of all quackery on Usenet, misc.health.alternative. From around 1998 to 2004, Usenet was my home, and that's where I fought what I thought to be the good fight against irrationality, antiscience, and quackery. Then, around December 2004, on a whim after having read a TIME Magazine article on blogging, I sat down in front of my computer, fired up Blogspot and started the first iteration of this blog, which still actually exists as an archive for some of my early work. (Hey, if you're new, you might want to go there and read a few of what I consider to be "classic" posts. Just ignore the horrendous template. Hey, I thought it was kind of cool at the time.) Then, in early 2006, I joined ScienceBlogs, and, inexplicably, I'm still here. Given that a six year time might as well be six decades in Internet time, it is truly amazing that I'm still here.

In any case, what got me doing the blog navel-gazing thing that so annoys some people and that, mercifully, I rarely do was a post by a fellow fighter of the good fight, who confesses to a crisis of faith:

I've been away from the blog for a little bit because I had to take care of some stuff at home, at work, and everywhere in between. That, and I had a little bit of a crisis of faith. Not "Faith" faith, but just faith. I started questioning whether or not it was worthwhile to keep up this blog, keep working on "The Poxes", and keep up my other extracurricular activities regarding combating anti-vaccine and anti-science forces.
After all, only two kinds of people show up on this blog: those who agree with science and those who vehemently oppose it. There are very few, if any, people who are in between visiting this blog. Alright, there are very few, if any, people who are in between telling me that they have been visiting this blog. I call them the "silent in-betweeners".

Basically, this problem resonated with me, because for the most part I have the same issue. It's not just in my vaccine posts, either (although those posts do tend to be the most polarizing). It's in every post that deals with quackery and pseudoscience. Some of my posts about Stanislaw Burzynski, for example, have resulted in the influx of of Burzynski supporters arguing for their hero, against which my regulars argued brilliantly. The same thing regularly happens when I discuss issues such as death by alternative medicine, Andrew Wakefield, and various other issues. It's not a problem unique to vaccines. It's what happens whenever rationality takes on nearly any form of pseudoscience.

That being said, vaccines do appear to be among the worst, as far as bringing home the polarization, but to me that means that this is an area where I can do the most good. Like our blogger suffering a crisis of faith, I want to reach these silent in-betweeners. I realized long ago (and have said so many times) that the die-hard antivaccinationists are not people whose minds can be changed. It's pointless even to try; if you do, you will become rapidly frustrated at your failure. Neither you nor I will be likely to be able to change the minds of the likes of J.B. Handley, Barbara Loe Fisher, Ginger Taylor, Jake Crosby, Dan Olmsted, and the like. It's just not going to happen; they are as committed to their antivaccine faith as any fanatic is to his religion. Indeed, in my eight years of blogging, I can't point to a single die-hard antivaccinationist whose mind I've changed.

On the other hand, I can point to e-mails from parents who were in doubt about vaccines who were reassured by reading my posts, both here and elsewhere. Equally importantly, I can point to e-mails from people who cite me as having helped them along their road out of woo and towards rationality. I'm not going to exaggerate. I don't get a lot of these e-mails, maybe a dozen a year or less, but I do get them. Whenever I get such an e-mail, I can't tell you how good it makes me feel. I feel as though I've succeeded in one of the major tasks that any human being can do. I also get the feeling that there must be more out there than the handful of e-mails that I get. After all, not everyone who's affected that way will bother to write me, and, my massively egotistical blog persona notwithstanding, I don't labor under the delusion that I'm the only one affecting those who manage to take the hard steps from credulity to skepticism, from magic to science. There are too many other skeptical bloggers out there, some of whom have been around longer than I have and some of whom are better at different areas than I am, some of whom are more prolific than I am.

There's also another reason why I keep going, and it's a selfish one. I love blogging, and I really like the niche in the blogosophere that I've made for myself. Does anyone think that I'd spend as much time doing what I'm doing that I do it almost every day, month after month, year after year? It's a passion that drives me. If you don't have the passion, you probably shouldn't be doing this. You might last a while, but you won't last indefinitely. I also take a lot of abuse for what I do. In actuality, it goes back before I even started this blog, when some neo-Nazi pinheads circulated a post all over Usenet that they referred to Nizkor NAMBLA. Nizkor is a website that's been around since the 1990s that provides evidence-based rebuttals to the lies of Holocaust deniers. I never had anything to do with Nizkor, but that didn't stop them from lumping me with a bunch of others who combatted online Holocaust denial in a truly hilariously inept list of "NAMBLA members." And, of course, after I started blogging, periodically some crank or antivaccinationist or other would find out who I was and try to get me in trouble with my job. It freaked me out the first time it happened back in 2005, but I soon realized that my bosses recognized these clowns for what they were, cranks, and ignored them. The most recent attempt in 2010 actually helped me in that my dean actually offered her full-throated support and asked me if I felt that I needed protection. Obviously, I still think it's worth it.

There's also another benefit. I have learned so much doing this. I now know more about vaccines and immunology than I ever have before. I've learned all about logical fallacies, history, and areas of medicine into which I would never have ventured if not for blogging. I've even learned a lot about my own specialty, cancer. Before I started blogging about overdiagnosis, cancer heterogeneity, and other issues, I didn't actually know that much about the topics. Now I do. It's even translated into some minor academic recognition. Just last month I was invited to my second academic conference to give a talk solely on the basis of my reputation blogging, both here and at my other blogging location.

Finally, I can't neglect the people. Over the years, I've accumulated an awesome set of regular commenters who have my back. I have a demanding day job. That means that, while I can produce these blog posts on a regular basis, I can't produce these blog posts in a regular basis if I have to be the one also defending them against the inevitable antivaccine, antiscience, and pro-quackery trolls who regularly invade my comments. Then I got to meet some of you at various skeptical events, such as TAM and speaking engagements. I've put faces to some of the names, and I know that, in certain cities at least, I can always count on there being people there with whom I can hang out if I happen to be at a surgical or research meeting there.

Finally, all of this brings us back to the question of a "crisis of faith." Like our blogger, some of what drives me is this:

I mean, I try to answer these questions as much as I can, but I'm going on what I think the questions are and against what the anti-science forces have said. Because they -- the anti-science -- are surely filling someone's mind with all sorts of [expletive] lies. And that irritates the hell out of me, because people who should know better, and many times do, are misinforming people out of things like chemotherapy for cancer, vaccines for vaccine-preventable diseases, and even antibiotics for infections.

The bottom line is that all of us bloggers, whatever we blog about, have our own reasons for doing what we do. I've just blathered a bit about mine. In the end, however, you have to really love what you do, as I do. Sure, I have the occasional "crisis of faith" (although I don't call it that, obviously) in which I wonder whether what I do is getting through to anyone. It doesn't take much to make me realize that However, I love doing this so much that these crises rarely last very long and have rarely made me seriously wonder whether I should stop doing what I'm doing. The same is not necessarily true for everyone. I hope it's not true for The Poxes Blog. We supporters of science need all the allies we can get.

oracknows Fri, 09/07/2012 - 01:00

Tags

Skepticism/Critical Thinking

Yes, you ARE accomplishing something! Not too long ago, I was knee-deep in woo and for years I had been fully-committed to anti-vaccine lunacy. Your blog kept getting in the way of my Google "research"; at first I would scoff and go back to my Googling, but eventually I was so intrigued just couldn't turn away. Once under Orac's spell, I abandoned the woo. I am a daily reader of RI (and The Poxes!) but rarely feel intelligent enough to comment; I may be top dog on the mommy forums, but I'm out of my league here.

You are overlooking the huge service you are providing to us "who agree with science", but who don't necessarily have the chops to bring down the woo as thoroughly . I, for one, learn a ton of stuff from reading your blog (among a few others). Think of it as an ongoing informal science/medicine class with a very large class size. Oh, and I look forward to reading the lessons!

It will help those with open minds. However, I think there are many who will continue to be stuck in cognitive dissonance.

Speaking of those who suffer from cognitive dissonance. John Best is getting sued over his blog. http://www.universalhub.com/2012/autism-center-sues-over-blog-posts-cal…

I suspect that there are more people who are convinced to give up the woo than openly announce themselves. They probably don't feel they can announce a change of heart without endangering their social position (adopting beliefs like those is a HUGE emotinal investment); but I'm sure some of them do change their minds, and at least quietly retire from the fight.

So yeah, the accomplishments you look for aren't always visible.

The frequency with which proponents of CAM appear on skeptical blogs to say that skeptical bloggers are wasting their time, and should be writing about something else, suggests that skeptical bloggers are not wasting their time.

Gee.

For rebuttal to the most common Vaccines R Evil memes, I simply use your blog posts. They say everything I would say, only much better.

I'd say there's value there.

Maybe OT, maybe not.

Mark Crislip posted today a few random thoughts on Science-Based Medicine.

(funny how grammar works - "on science-based medicine" could be both the place where the post is, or the topic, and both interpretations are actually true)

I read RI regularly but have never commented here before. I find this blog and a handful of others a priceless source of reference material, logical argument and in depth analysis. I am not involved in medicine at all but I do live in area where the background levels of "woo" in the community are dangerously high and with frightening amounts of opposition to vaccines for example. The methodical way the latest fashions in woo are dissected and shown to be nonsense give me the ammunition to carry on the fight. I haven't explained myself very well, but without your patient take downs of popular alternative medecine to inspire me I would not have been as convincing in my arguments against woo. As such the power of this blog reaches beyond its immediate readership. So thank you!

I came here years ago because of cancer quackery that killed my Aunt. I stayed for all the rest, as I have 3 kids at vaccination ages. your blog started me on a quest for facts. I now blog and facebook often exposing bullshit on many levels and get a lot of positive response. And I'm the demographic you think you don't reach. I'm uneducated (can't count film school as college, if I'm to be honest), a stay at home mom of 3, surrounded by the "go natural" movement and I have a mom who over the years has fallen into an ocean of woo and homeopathy. There are some who are convinced, or who feel their personal honor rides on their beliefs, but many are listening, and repeating, your message. Thanks for being here!

One of the most important reasons to say anything is not because you're going to convince people who disagree with you, but because it's important to have dissenting voices, to counter "Everyone knows..." and "Everyone agrees that...". One of the reasons irrational ideas win is that rational people are the first to recognize the poor return on their efforts, because, well, they're rational, and a cost/benefit analysis (I'm talking in terms of more abstract benefits, not actual money, of course, but time invested vs. minds changed) tells them they're wasting their time. Unfortunately, in an irrational world, irrational actions are often the only rational ones: You can influence a cultural consensus without ever being able to show you've changed a single person's mind. Simply having your voice out there matters. Think "Life of Brian", where the crowd chants, "Yes, We Are All Individuals!", and the one poor shmuck pipes up "I'm not!". If you're rational, it's your role to be that one poor shmuck.

http://beta.wosu.org/allsides/discussion-of-recent-swine-flu-outbreaks-…

This is our local talk/discussion public radio show. The topics were swine flu (first death this year right here in Ohio) and West Nile Virus.

Guests:

Dr. Mary DiOrio (State Epidemiologist for the Ohio Department of Health)
Dr. Tony Forshey (State Veterinarian for the Ohio Department of Agriculture)
Luke Jacobs (Section Chief in the Division of Environmental Health for Columbus Public Health)

A woman called in with a question about Lyme disease. She is being treated for Lyme disease and asked if the guests knew that Lyme disease could be transmitted by mosquitoes as well as deer ticks. [You may wish to look at the credentials of the guests listed above.]

There was a significant pause before the response that Lyme disease is NOT transmitted by mosquitoes. The caller then responded [paraphrase] "I can help educate you by giving the name of the doctor who is treating me.".

I am beginning to become very weary of the verb "educate" being used to mean "expose one to misinformation".

Since my speakers aren't working, I can't tell you exactly when in the program this happened, but it's probably in the last twenty minutes.

Orac, it is awesome of you to show this support for The Poxes Blog and its author. Blogging is really hard work: it takes a lot of time and energy to come up with a topic, research it and write out the post. And when you're not sure whether or not it makes a difference with people (or if they're even reading it), it's so easy to just give it up and move off to some other activities.

I've learned a lot from you, Phil Plait and others. Rather ironically, it was the actions of the anti-vaccine folks at Age of Autism that pushed me into starting up my own blog. That led me to learn even more about a very narrow subject. Hopefully I'll be able to expand my range, like you, if I stick it out long enough.

Oh, and about skeptical blogs' accomplishments:

Reading your blog certainly refined my opinions on vaccines (less black and white, but more strongly established at the same time) and provided me with arguments to bring to a debate.
Not that I'm that good a debater, but still...

It also forced me to search for citations to support my arguments, something I am lazy to do (and I'm a scientist - shame on me).

Finally, being exposed to the rebuttal of various woo prepared me for when friends started talking about it in real life. The debates on these threads or other blogs also showed me that being confrontational is generally not a good move (thanks Phil Plait's "Don't be a dick"), but civilly providing counter-arguments and clearly calling a woo-theory stupid is.

A few month ago, I had a discussion with a friend about alkaline diets. Despite being a biologist, she and her husband were falling for it. Because I read about these diets here or in other skeptical websites, I was able to immediately point out that the body is perfectly able to deal with acidity - just think of the amount of acid produced by your stomach every day - and that these diets are nothing but the official advice of "eat your greens, and eat less meat" with the serial number filled of. That was enough for her to question her beliefs.

Truly, knowledge is power. And you and your fellow scientific bloggers provide it.

Ye of small faith, never give up the good work! Or in less biblical manner, I can offer my own conversion story and the effect skeptical bloggers have had on me.

I got sucked into natural and alt-med world because of acne. Long story short, my acne laughed at anything dermatologists and doctors threw at it. In desperation I became an altie. And in the process wasted 8 years of my life and god knows how many brain cells died because of all the logical fallacies. Then I happened on Skeptoid and The Skeptic's Guide to The Universe. Little bit later you could hear the pin drop. Conversion completed and my mind was liberated. So thank you for playing part in the rebirth of my brain!

A few months back I started a blog that offers rational advice about natural and alternative acne treatment, http://www.acneeinstein.com/. I hope that I can affect others who were in the same place I was. Basically desperate for solution and already one foot in the door into the altie world.

Acne blogosphere is nothing but alt-met and woo at the moment. The most popular blogger just posted a video on how connecting to earth helps her deal with emotional issues. Another popular blogger just raved about her reiki session.

It's bad. Really bad. Detoxing, colon cleansin and liver flushing are pretty much taken as granted. Not too long ago somebody enthusiastically recommended iridology. TCM, Aturveda and Naturopathic (non-)medicine are also among the staple.

To my knowledge mine is the only blog that offers skeptical and critical view on these things. I find that it's very helpful to have high-profile skeptical blogs that cover a range of topics as reference to link to. So when somebody starts chriping about homeopathy or colon cleanse (or perhaps in combination where homeopathy follows colon cleanse and where the output of the colon cleanse is used as homeopathic remedy - all disease begins in colon, after all) it's useful to point to well-written and reasoned arguments against them.

So keep up the good fight. You are making a difference!

I'll add myself in the number of your convert :) I was a fence-sitter, in between science and woo, and then I started to read your blog and well, the rest is history as they say.

I have also started to point your blog to other people, in attempt to gain follower and to put them out of the bad woo.

About this: would you mind me translating some of your post in Italian? Many in my country can't speak english very well, or at all, and I would like to point some of your post sometime.

Keep up the good work, please!

I echo the senitment that this blog has made me a better debater. It also has helped to NOT argue when faced with a true believer. A co-worker recently told me he believed 100 per cent that 9/11 was an inside job. I think he was waiting for me to debate him. When I said that I wouldn't argue with someone 100 per cent certain on a subject I could see him deflate a little. In the past, I may have tried arguing with him but this blog (and others of course) have taught me the value of picking your fights.......so thanks!

First off, I guess I've got another blog (the poxes?) to look at now.

RI and the SBM blog have been great resources for me as a skeptic. Whenever discussions come up (especially with fairly reasonable people) about various health topics, I can usually go and find a few relevant articles at one place or the other and put up a link. The only problem sometimes is finding the right article.

This post seems to be baiting us for an Orac love-fest, but I'll bite. Three ways blogs like this help me that may not be apparent:

1. Personal information: A few years back, I had some back trouble and a chiropractor was suggested. I vaguely knew of some controversy there, but not what it was. In searching for information, I found Science Based Medicine and that introduced me to the broader science based medicine community. Needless to say, I did not visit a chiropractor.

2. Knowledge to share: I frequently encounter people pushing various forms of woo on others (hazard of being in a professional, west-coast community). In the past, I would counter with "That sounds like garbage." Now I can say "That is garbage and here is why..." Thus, blogs such as this help people who don't even know they exist.

3. Research pitfalls: As a medical researcher myself, I appreciate the dissection of bad arguments that comes with this blog. I have caught myself and others falling into the same traps. For one, I was susceptible to the ecological fallacy.

Don't let's forget that Orac gives a ton of free ammo to supporters of science-based medicine that we can use in our own life. Call it, for a lack of a better term, a distributed denial of stupidity (DDoS) attack.

I'm one of the parents you (along with Esther at Mainstream Parenting) convinced, on vaccines and other subjects. Still reading, no longer wasting money on acupuncture.

Orac,
I've been one of the silent lurkers for over a year now and I can truly say that this blog has helped me fight back against a woo-infused upbringing as well as being a great place to point my science-oriented fence sitting friends to for factual vaccine information. Because of you and your commenters, I have learned how to hold my own in "debates" about vaccine fears, which I knew were wrong, but until I found this blog not how to prove to them why it was wrong.
On a more personal level your posts on cancer research and general cancer quackery have prevented my mother from wasting precious time and money pursuing alt med treatments as she had done her entire adult life for other ailments.
I never commented before because I feel that I have nothing to add to the already brilliant regulars, but it is high time to tell you I am here and listening and so are many of my converted friends!

Armed with a rusty biological sciences degree and a tab on my toolbar to your blog, I regularly venture forth into Aussie based forums to combat the anti vax/science/ pro woo discussions. I know that a Google search of RI combined with cntrl F will reliably pinpoint whatever altie guru name someone is frothing about, or lead me to a starting point for citations. I am in awe of most regular contributors, and have been know to re-quote some pithy comebacks, ie:
"I am also outspoken against the over-vaccination of children. Just as soon as there’s any real evidence children are being overvaccinated, I’ll be sure to speak out." (kd, back in March)

I was very pro-vaccine in a really crunchy new mom group. I found this blog during my search for more information to smack down their arguments (thanks!). However, I was pretty open to other areas of woo and had confused homeopathic with home remedy (I know...I know...I just didn't know). This blog set me straight on a lot of stuff, caused me to dump my accupuncturist AND leave the mom group. I have a really woo-happy mother-in-law and your blog has given me the knowledge to keep my husband from following her lead. I've meant to email you thanks for a while, but just haven't. In short: you've saved my ass a ton of money and have kept my child away from crazy treatments in favor of science-based medicine. I had great critical thinking skills in life, but somehow hadn't applied this to medicine and science. I do now!!

Because I enjoy providing grist for mills and fuel for fires...

I am motivated first and foremost, by the lurkers: I imagine them in the dark cavern-y emptiness of cyberspace- listening silently, suspending judgment and seeking a glimpse of a glimmer that might lead them toward a closer mental representation of an approximation of whatever reality might be. And they are out there and they occasionally step forward in appreciation. I really like them!

Secondly, I am sad to report that alt med nonsense on the web appears to be growing exponentially because of technologocal advances- facebook, videostreaming and phone apps all are utilised in spreading the gospel of pseudoscience. Websites like Age of Autism procreate and the resultant unruly children are the Canary Party and TMR. Woo-meisters like Adams and Null envision themselves as media empire builders who may be dis-contented to be purely purveyors of health mis-informational b#llsh!t but fancy themselves to be leaders of political, economic and religious thought movements. Recently both have engaged in hateful speech about their own country and its leaders as surely as they do about SBM, education and most normal folks' lifestyle. Venom and seething hatred encourage their followers to follow suit in their day-to-day social interactions.

Finally, I imagine that places like RI are the cyber descendants of the post-Enlightment coffeehouses where gentlemen ( mostly) inspired by the new learning spoke and debated while drinking coffee ( and other beverages).

Currently, higher education can be expensive and time-consuming for adults who are increasingly strapped for time and money but might like to understand scientific advances and issues that affect their lives and their children's- at their own rate, in their own homes, free of charge.
Of course, like minds can also meet up.

And yes, I enjoy writing and playing around with styles and images.. on a cold, dreary February day in 2008, I decided to follow the call of the Muse ( or whoever that morose guy who constantly hangs around here is) and talk dirt about woo.

Orac love-fest sounds like a great idea! I'm another one of the silent majority at RI, who needs something to counter the mainstream media that bombards us daily with almost-believable woo without countering all that crap with science-based experts. I don't feel smart enough or educated enough to keep up with the great banter that usually shows up here in the comment section; but in case you're wondering, doc, we're out here and we are listening.

I would encourage folks to also head over to The Poxes Blog and show Reuben some support, as well. Some really nice posts over there.

Okay, my attraction to this blog was ~ November 2009, when I saw the Desiree Jennings (I now have dystonia from a flu shot), story on local TV. I lurked here for a number of months before venturing forth with a comment, whereupon the Ugh Troll unleashed full bore personal attacks at me.

Confused and disheartened about this, I almost stopped posting, until some of the RI ladies reached out to me.

Around the same time I saw Brian Deer on television, visited his website and sent him a long email, which he responded to, almost immediately.

I found some other great science blogs, when those bloggers posted here and have posted on those blogs as well. In short, that is my history on science blogs.

We do try to educate people about science...each of us has special interests/knowledge...in turn I have learned so much about science...including CAM, which fascinates me.

The greatest benefit I have enjoyed by reading RI, is the discovery of the diversity of rational, critical, and skeptical blogs, podcasts, and conferences which exist. As my awareness of these resources grows, so does my comfort and conviction with my stance on science v. woo.

I have two wonderful, bright, intelligent (no personal bias!) teenaged children who are constantly exposed to "second-hand skepticism" around me. They are both considering studying medicine and need to know how to evaluate the quality of information presented to them.

I am grateful for the many dedicated skeptical bloggers AND the well-considered commenters. It takes a virtual community to raise a scientifically literate child!

I think that we sceptics provide a counter to the burgeoning alternative media that causes me to stop in my tracks and shake my head in dis-belief more frequently than I like. I am amazed by the growth o alt medf internet TV/ radio, video sites and so-called documentaries popping up like naturally poisonous mushrooms that paralyse higher mental processing in the susceptible. There's an antidote, however.

Many topics are not covered in depth in the media and when they are ( e.g. Roger Cohen, NYT, on the Stanford review of organic vs conventional foods) people like Mike Adams step right up to the challenge ( yesterday, today @ Natural News), heaping scornful derision and imploring his followers to demand firing of the writer by the paper.

Progress and enlightenment will always be opposed by those who are comfortable with myths and tall tales instead of science as well as those with axes to grind and useless products to sell.

I love learning new things, but I rarely comment on blogs unless I think I have something substantial to contribute (only rarely ask a question -- some blogs seem more suited to that than others). That means that when I'm learning the most, I'm usually not commenting. I have never been antivaccine or antiscience, but I've certainly been hugely educated by RI.

It is precisely people who know they don't know who will remain silent. They don't have either knowledge to share or the impervious arrogance of ignorance. So the people who are open to learning are the silent ones.

"You are overlooking the huge service you are providing to us “who agree with science”, but who don’t necessarily have the chops to bring down the woo as thoroughly"

What Mike said.

I found your blog and have been reading for about a year. the other day, I was reading an article about autism and metabolic disorder (rare genetic mutation, etc) and that changing the diet corrected the problem in mice. My first reaction was Wow!, my second was, mice don't make good biological models for human cognition.

I find myself reading all health news with a much more skeptical eye (and a bookmark on Pubmed) since I found you.

Blogs such as this one (or Anaximperator for that matter) will not eradicate quackery. But I still find it worthwhile. I am learning as I blog, and I am learning when I read other blog posts.

But equally important, these blogs provide information that counter a lot of the misinformation that is presented by quacks all over the internet.

For example before we started blogging about the Burzynski movie, the testimonials presented were understandably seen as strong convincers. I sincerely do believe that these blog posts did matter.

It is very probable that the vaccine scare would be far worse if they hadn't been countered by bloggers. And we could go on.

So let's keep on blogging - It does matter :-)

I first found the wonders of Orac while searching for info on Starchild Abraham Cherrix, back in '06. He reminded me of my Unca Cecil, the worlds smartest human, at the Straight Dope http://www.straightdope.com/

Being able to learn from the words smartest human and from the greatest computer in the universe is truly a great blessing.

I'm not a doctor, and not a scientist. But unlike some of the others who share my lack of qualifications in those areas, I can build on what I do know, and see how other facts fit together. What I do know about the human body and how it works (and doesn't work) was, and still is, limited, Orac and the regular posters have greatly expanded on that knowledge in the past 6 years.

For example, homeopathy - I thought it was just using small doses of herbal medicines. Reading RI taught me just how wrong I was. Sure, I could have learned that at, say, wikipedia, but learning it here was fun.

I'm looking forward to more educational goodness, both here and, now, at The Poxes.

Heads up guys!

While slumming again at AoA, we find our old friend protesting with the cranks against the Governor, to influence him against signing California AB 2109. I just posted over at this blog, in "moderation", and I could use some help...the cranks are in the majority there.

http://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2012/09/05/actor-rob-schneider-joins-in-…

This blog is like a sitting of a science lecture. I have learned so much about woo because of this blog. Both Orac and his trusty hoarde of truth seekers provide endless study material and up to date information. I love Orac's thoroughness. I hope it continues for a long time. I am way better off for knowing about and reading RI ... way better off.

(Excuse replying to several people at once; saves waiting the minute or two to comment again!)

L20 - One thing that concerns me is that it seems to often take serious illness or death to move opinions. (It’s doubly a pity as they're anecdotal, really.) One very recent example in New Zealand is a girl who died only two hours after being suspected that she might have meningitis; according to media it’s sparked off vaccinations in the area.

T - I suppose you have to deal with the copyright thing, but you should also be able to create links to google translations of web pages. They'll be patchy (and a bit hilarious!), but the gist should be there.

Todd W.: “I would encourage folks to also head over to The Poxes Blog and show Reuben some support, as well. Some really nice posts over there.” - my thoughts too.

Orac, thanks for what you do. Your accessible, yet factual descriptions of cancer mechanics and treatments helped me make more informed choices when my poor dear late cat Nero developed a lymphoma tumour (and a shout-out to all the good folks at the University of Guelph Small Animal Clinic for their love, support, and excellent work) -- it later metastasised, probably from a microtumour that grew after the primary locus was removed, and he died some time later, but hey, I wouldn't know why that happened if it weren't for you.

I also have used my RI-gained knowledge of breast cancer to get myself through, and give useful information to my family when my mom was diagnosed with DCIS back in October. Knowledge has made it a lot less stressful, at least for me. So thanks.

While slumming again at AoA, we find our old friend protesting with the cranks against the Governor, to influence him against signing California AB 2109.

Their Twitter feed is hilarious on this issue. They have so far disgorged the following points of analysis:

AB2109 in CA requires Dr.s note for non medical vaccine exemption. What if I need a priests' sig to not attend Church or face penalty?

Like new voter's ID issues to put up hurdles - AB2109 CA puts up hurdles for those seeking legit vax exemptions. Taking away rights.

Oh, and some other one about needing a Rabbi's signature to not circumcise. In general. I'd repost it, but they've already protected their Tweets.

@ Grant: I second your suggestion to go and post at the "The Poxes" blog.

Meanwhile, Reuben and I have been amusing ourselves with the back to back banter on the blog I linked to above.

@ Interrobang: I haven't had a pet for years (and years), but I sympathize with you for the loss of your beloved kitty.

And of course Interrobang, we all sending our best wishes to you and your mom. :-)

I know how you feel, but I think it can certainly be said that blogging has not been competely ineffective in the UK. Half the university courses in quackery have shut down since bloggers started to expose the nonsense that they taught. See, for example, http://www.dcscience.net/?p=4900

Of course the experiment is not very well controlled, The closures could have been partly a result of hard economic times, or s change in the zeitgeist, But bloggers can take some credit for the change in the zeitgeist, and if fewer students want to do the courses, bloggers can take some of the credit for that too.

The bloggers message has influenced the mainstream media. Favourable reports of quackery in newspapers are now much less common than they were, even in papers that were previously totally uncritical.

Of course progress is a matter of two steps forward and one step back, The government has, unbelievably, appointed as Minister of Health who is so scientifically illiterate that he is on record as supporting homeopathy. Nonetheless homeopathy is clearly in retreat. It's a slow job, but it's fun, and we are winning.

I disagree Orac. Every once in a while, you and others (even me) do a good job and convince someone. You're right, most of your readers either are true believers or true haters, but maybe once or twice a month, maybe even more frequently, someone says, "yeah, he's right."

Violating every one of your principles, I have an anecdotal story. About 2 or 3 years, I had a friend who had a diagnosis of breast cancer, who was convinced that some lame alt-med treatment was the way she wanted to go. She refused to listen to science based evidence, but the university of google was her choice, where all evidence was equal in quality. However, one of your alt-med stories resonated with her. And she let me provide some information from NCI and PubMed that showed the best treatment.

She's alive now. She's leading a vigorous life. I don't know if you're responsible. Maybe I got lucky. Maybe I should have become an attorney. Maybe I just wore her down. Maybe it was E) All of the above.

I think when people are googling for information, the more hits that come from people that are on the science side, the more chances that maybe a openminded party will make a good choice.

Keep up the good fight. It's all you can do.

I first was directed to your blog by HCN of the JREF forums about 6 years ago (she now posts as Chris). I spent around 6 hours doing nothing but soaking up the insolence from your brilliant blogposts, and went to bed at 3am.

I haven't quite repeated that stunt but have become a regular reader. I like to connect with like-minded peeps in what seems an enlarging world of irrationality and remind myself there are sane guys around.

I also heavily borrow your material and refer to your alter ego in my encounters with the dark forces of antiscience as I battle ignorance throughout the wooniverse.

Aluta continua!

Orac et alia,

It is a rare thing when I have a worthwhile comment for this blog and admittedly from time to time (such as now) I have neglected it for some weeks and have a lot of catching up to do.

To address the main point, it is probably impossible to fathom the impact you have, have had and will continue to have by delivering your insolence, respectful or otherwise. This is true of most authorship. Very much more is written that ever achieves wide acclaim. Effect is a very different metric. Effect is also cumulative. I suspect without evidence that those who never comment and only lurk quickly find themselves saying or writing, in other contexts, go and look it up at RI on scienceblogs...

If I thought about it I am sure I could conjure up several more plausible immeasurable ways in which your work here anastomoses across boundaries we cannot fathom. So take heart, continuing should not require any (f)aith. Fortitude, no doubt.

It is also quite true that your regular commenters are both a strong asset and a powerful manifestation of the much more extensive and pervasive mute community that through this informal forum of continuing education grows, learns, disseminates and reinforces the principles, the purpose and the ideals with every passing day.

I'd go on but I don't think I need to.

It does merit pointing out, however, that there is another side to coin. Those who come here to disparage and ridicule and defame have an agenda or pehaps multiple agendas. The general class includes those for whom all forms of wishful thinking and superstition are critical to their world view. A (perhaps nor completely overlapping) subset would be those who have an investment in one of the fantasys you consistently address. Yet a third subset (once again of indeterminate coincidence with the prior two) consists of those with a vested interested in promoting and yes, profitting from the falsehoods of fanciful cancer cures, 'natural immunity', homeopathy, and on and on. They see you as an enemy. Pragmatically, you are whether or not your intent in any sense is to do them harm, your work here harms them. It lessens their amoral willingness to exploit fear and ignorance in others for their own personal gain. So at times, things will get ugly.

Since your OP was restrospective to an extent, you mentioned the fabled usenet, I'll allow myself two digressions and try to keep the brief. I too have a long history with usenet albeit in newsgroups you likely did not frequent, namely talk.origins and sci.geo.geology. Last I checked the former was still the usual furball whilst the latter has become essentially moribund. In the case of the latter, 18 or so years ago many actual geologists took part. But all that changed when the cranks began smothering discussion with fetid dingo kidneys. The reeason I bring this up is simple, the abdication by the real scientists at S.G.G. was really a manifestation of a not complete but disturbingly widespread trend among colleagues adopt the false equivalency that "everyone else is doing it". The IT being pandering to nonsense and flasehoods. What many of them did not realize is that silence is a form of complicity.

The second and last of my digressions is a petty little bit of pedantry but I do think functionally important. The science blogs format has changed. Two very minor but useful things seem to have gone away. One is a count of the total comments on a post and the numbering of comments for ease of reference. The other is dates do not appear to accompany times of comments. This may all be due to my primitive OS and browser. But I found those features very helpful.

I second Michael's final sentences above.

Hoist on my own petard, even as I post my comment the dates appear!

David Colquhoun,

I think influencing journalists is one thing we can do fairly well.

Speaking from experience of our blogs (at sciblogs.co.nz) - they're hosted by the NZ Science Media Centre and we've had some exposure to media. I can also see indirect effects we have contributed to. (Just as one example, I and few others have tried to encourage editors to not ‘promote’ charity drive for some terribly ill kid if the ‘treatment’ the parents sought was clearly unsound. [This partly via us sending letters to the editors, so there's also something outside of the blogs going on, too.] Thus far I haven't seen them repeat it this year, so maybe the current lot of editors are learning - ? I guess can hope...)

About the situation in the UK: There seems to be a lot of fuss about Jonathon Hunt having been appointed some health-related post overlooking the NHS and that he has previously supported homeopathic hospitals - would love your thoughts on that. (Perhaps he's just an ambitious "yes" type who just says what he thinks is popular?)

Effect is also cumulative. I suspect without evidence that those who never comment and only lurk quickly find themselves saying or writing, in other contexts, go and look it up at RI on scienceblogs…

Ah, you remind me of the good ol' Reveres. I'll take it one further: the effect isn't just in cyberspace, it propagates locally. My circle of friends is rather diverse, but the fact that they're there in the first place means that they're willing to tolerate occasional bouts of monomania on my part, and over time, they seem to be getting harder-nosed about these matters.

Faberge Organic Shampoo? Never tried it myself.

Meanwhile, back at AoA, they are all debating who should be elected. Decisions, decisions decision...Obama and Romney have both made strong statements in favor of vaccines:

http://www.ageofautism.com/2012/09/president-obama-and-governor-romney-…

I was linked here a few years ago, when someone was helping me to argue against a mother treating her child's serious illness with woo. As a victim of religious medical abuse, I'll do what I can to speak for the children. That's especially true when dealing with American families, who may be using woo due to inability to afford health insurance. I try to convince them that early medical intervention is going to be cheaper than "wooful waiting".

I can't go to uni anymore, or work in the health service, due to health problems. In both places I recommended this site. In my online volunteer health advisory role the same is true, especially as we largely deal with sexual health. I've used RI and SBM to back up discussions about viruses, vaccines, and the benefits of less frequent testing in the US.

Finally, I love the community here. I feel like I'm among equals, not having to always defend/explain my anti-woo mission, and not needing to dumb everything down to a reading age of six. It fills in that dreadful gap caused by being housebound.

So keep up the good work. I've even converted my mother to about 75% science and 25% woo, an amazing (if slow and painful) improvement.

Thanks!

What your blog has done for me, is give me plenty of high-grade ammo for fighting anti-vax memes in other forums. I'm a prolific commenter on Daily Kos, which is a huge progressive Democratic site, and about 300 people follow my comments. There's a good number of doctors and working scientists on DKos, and a larger number of rationalists in general.

We've become more and more vociferous about vaccination and anti-vax nuts. Some time last year we hit critical mass with our comments, to the point where the site owner (Markos Moulitsas) added "anti-vaccination conspiracy theory" to the list of other types of CT (such as 9/11 "trutherism") that are cause for instantly banning someone from the site. Victory!!

Your blog was a source of some of the information that helped get anti-vaxism on the insta-ban list on DK. It's also strengthened our little nexus of people who will readily shoot down any comment promoting homeopathy or a half-dozen other forms of quackery. And it's also been a first-line source of alerts about obscure topics that we are now more aware of so we can shoot them down if and when they pop up.

For that matter, homeopathy was hardly on my radar except as "a traditional healing practice that's of questionable value" until I started reading your stuff. And while I avoided wacko healing practices myself, I wasn't as well equipped to shred the arguements for them from various new-agey folks I know, until I'd been reading this blog for a good while.

Now I just need to go look up the best arguements to persuade a good friend (who has top-flight science education, wonders never cease!) that aluminum in the whooping cough vax isn't going to crap up his brain.

Not that The Universe's Most Powerful Computer could ever have a crisis of faith, but...

I can only echo the previous comments that you've helped me sharpen my discussion skills (not debating -- as we know, some topics aren't amenable to a true debate format) for dealing with woo, even when it crops up in my own house.

Since my speciality hardly ever crops up here, I limit myself to the occasional Monty Python reference or a bit of snark for the trolls. I leave the smackdown of anti-vax kaka to the estimable regulars here, but I do attempt to debunk crap on FB and elsewhere.

Thanks Orac, keep it up. :-)

I'm not very active here but I'm active on several forums in my home country. And whenever I see sCAM or anti-vac topics, I use arguments that I have learnt here or on SBM or simply link to the relevant post. For example, I used your post about the diversity of cancer to point out why capsaicin cannot be the miracle cure for all cancers and also linked to Cherry's article on pertussis outbreak in another discussion.

And now it's time I finally sat down to prepare that sCAM speech that I've emailed you about. Thanks again for your kind permission to use your material.

I haven't read past the first few sentences, but I want to comment that, as someone who has been reading since 2006 when I was in high school, I think your blog has made a difference. A lot of what I know about medicine and things to look for in evaluating scientific studies I learned from this blog. As an autistic self-advocate, I was mainly interested in countering antivaxxers since a lot of people who support a vaccine-autism connection support the various evidence-free, potentially harmful "biomed treatments" like chelation, Lupron, hyperbaric oxygen, restrictive diets, fecal transplants, and MMS enemas (to name a few). I'm pretty high functioning (with no speech delays, but speech difficulties and oddities), and considering that when I was four, getting my hair brushed felt like someone ripping my hair out of my skull, the physical discomfort alone makes me cringe to think how I would've felt had my parents made me go through these things. I am glad my dad is on the spectrum, and that my mom was not social enough or wealthy enough (we didn't get Internet access until I was 13, and then it was dial-up) to get involved in support groups and foot the bill for quackery.

This blog has opened my eyes to the wider world of medical quackery, and further, to the wider world of quackery and scams of all types. Just two days ago, someone approached me after class offering me a job as a salesperson, and very quickly I could tell this was almost certainly a MLM type scam. It helps that I am hyperskeptical of sales pitches anyway, but it would've taken me longer to tell if I hadn't read about their structure and tactics online on skeptic sites. As someone who is poor and looking for a better job, spending the time and money and energy to go back to college, such an offer might have looked very tempting (good thing I love academics).

Also, I just plain have a much easier time of countering myths about autism and the supposed causes and cures. This is especially important to be well-versed in these, since I often have great difficulty speaking spontaneously from my thoughts. I need significant time to put my thoughts to words for things that I do not say commonly (like "hi" or "have a good day"), that I have not memorized as scripts. So for anything I plan to advocate for, even in everyday life when the subject comes up, I have to rehearse over and over in my head what I would say if X came up. After that, I come up with different versions based on whether someone is a die-hard proponent of X or whether they're a concerned citizen who heard myth X from the radio. Then I have to commit those to memory, which I generally go through this process while reading about the topic, such as when I'm reading a blog post at Respectful Insolence.

Thank you, ORAC!

I finished reading, and remembered a couple things I want to add. For one, when I was taking an English class at college recently, the professor was antivaccine and hadn't vaccinated her children except for polio, since her husband apparently was not antivaccine, and handed us this article about cell phones which I criticized in class for starting from an assumption and then giving a laundry list of things to do, which is neither good science reporting nor good writing, which she defended by repeating the word limit (as if I, a writer, didn't understand this!)
When she said about vaccines that "the con side has valid arguments too", I replied that "while any opinion may be considered valid if sincerely held, merely being the other side of a coin doesn't give it 50% weight as to its veracity."

While I am certain I didn't change my professor's mind, I think I got through to some of the other people in the class (it helped that Wakefield had recently been exposed as fraudulent). I would not have been anywhere near so capable at arguing in real-time had I not had the experience and practice of reading and interacting with expert bloggers such as yourself (okay, you're not a vaccine expert, but you're a research medical doctor who's heavily researched vaccines and know a lot more about evaluating medical studies and scientific evidence than a physics major undergrad).

I also learned from this site what homeopathy was, so when I found out the eye drops my parents had been giving our dog were homeopathic, I knew they weren't going to help any more than plain water (she did get better, but I'm pretty sure the original problem was some plant matter scratching her eye - having recently had the same happen to me, it does heal on its own, but it helps if your eye is closed). Also, my first attempt at college I had a lot of back pain making school difficult and felt guilty that my needle phobia prevented me from trying acupuncture even though there was a free acupuncture clinic for students. Shortly after, I read your post about the toothpick study on this blog, and realized there was nothing to feel guilty about.

MESSAGE BEGINS--------------

I, for one, wouldn't exist without you.

Lord Draconis Zeneca VH7ihL
Foreward Mavoon of the Great Fleet, Subjugator General of Terra, Commander, First Fictional Figment Regiment

Glaxxon PharmaCOM Terrabase DIA
00010111111111111111101111101010100

--------------------MESSAGE ENDS

Well, you're just not gonna get too many comments from people who are undecided about this stuff. Maybe you hear from them down the road when they are more confident about their knowledge.

For me, the main thing I've learned is how many people actually take things like homeopathy and ant-vax fears seriously. It just was never an issue back when I was growing up.

I owe this blog a great debt for blowing away a number of cobwebby bits of BS lurking in my brain that I hadn't previously examined properly. It has definitely made a difference to me, and I have definitely made a difference to a number of people because of it. Please, keep the insolence coming.

Well, I am a pro-science type, and I am right now trying to sway some minds among my friends, specifically over vaccines. I don't point them at your blog because on the one hand, no, I don't think your writings are diplomatic enough to do the job, and I'm not going to be the concern troll who tells you what you should be writing. But when I try to put arguments together to (inshallah) sway some minds, your material is what I start with, and it's particularly useful to read if when I want to know what bizarre new theory I'll hear next from them.

You're not going to change many minds RIGHT HERE on this blog. But your material is important for that fight.

Though I've always been a bit skeptical of alternative claims (especially the ones that make absolutely no sense), I have to admit finding you when googling information to attempt to talk sense into Mr Woo. It hasn't worked with him yet, he's been too immersed in the alternative mindset (the one that includes the government, medical establishment, etc., are all bought and paid for by a conspiracy mindset). However, if I found it trying to figure out more information about some of woo's claims, then others are. Granted, most of the people you convert probably don't join in the conversation later, but it doesn't mean you haven't made a difference.

I have always been a sceptic of woo and your blog (and your partners on your other blog) have provided me with a hell of a lot of data and arguments to fight the woo in India- and there is a hell of a lot of that !

Thanks for fighting the good fight

Well, I know that this is going to be a little tangential in this context, but I have actually used this blog as a scientific source on occasion. For example, Orac wrote a fairly detailed set of pieces about clonal evolution of breast cancer cells -- if I remember correctly, it was the subject of discussion at the Chicago AACR meeting. It was so new that it wasn't even in print, but the Nature epub system had it. I presented it to our breast cancer research group journal club.

(note to those of you who are not working scientists: The term "journal club" just refers to scientists gathering from time to time -- weekly in our case -- and listening to one of us present an article from a peer reviewed journal. Then we discuss it as a group, trying to look for strongly made points and yes, weaknesses. We have done a lot of papers on the idea of cancer stem cells, epithelial mesenchymal transition, Her2/neu resistance, etc.)

So thanks to Orac, although I have to say that the Nature paper was devilishly hard to read and to interpret to a group who were not all adept in higher math and statistics. And it had a 160 page supplementary section. Maybe I should have done the companion piece instead. What I can tell you is that a room full of professional researchers and students got a feel for where research is heading, in terms of the new generation sequencing systems and high power mathematical modeling.

In addition, I was having a chat with a fellow aficionado of silent film at a festival in Hollywood last weekend, and it turns out he has a relative with some concerns about a breast issue. I repeated Orac's discussion (as best I could) to him about the dramatic advantages of early treatment as opposed to putting things off. This also got me to wondering about whether or not we should maybe present early screening and immediate treatment in a very optimistic way.

I already knew something about quackery and about Burzynski from reading Quackwatch, but RI has done a magnificent job of exposing a human disaster in progress.

Overall, I think it is useful for us to keep telling ourselves two things: First we have to maintain the commitment to the continuing advancement of science, science based medicine, and telling people the truth. Second, we have to realize that it is a part of good citizenship to give public reply to the professional liars and the dangerously self-deceptive.

I haven't commented here before, but I've lurked for several years. I came here because I was looking for ammunition against antivaxers, so I was already persuaded on that point. On the other hand, I had the fairly common misconceptions about the "power of placebo" that you and you co-bloggers at you other blog have frequently addressed.

Realizing that I was wrong about placebos (and reading Eherenreich's "Bright Sided") has changed my thinking tremendously. It's made me see how much of a baleful influence "Law of Attraction" and Just World thinking is. I'm even going to give a shot a blogging on related issues. I doubt I'll have the endurance of a box of blinking lights, but I do like writing.

This does sound like an Orac love fest. Oh well, nothing wrong with that in moderation. There's a lot I could say in response to this blog post. I've been so deep in medical mayhem and woo, that a book about me could rightfully be titled 'What Not To Do'.

I enjoy the RI blend of sarcasm and humor with solid information. I certainly can't fault Orac for not always being diplomatic. Sometimes it does take someone getting in your face and screaming 'What the HELL are you doing?!!", or "What the HELL are you thinking?!!" in order to get one's attention. Orac and his followers offer that attention-getting slap on the face, but armed with enough scientific details and explanations so lay people can understand.

"It is part of good citizenship to give public reply to the professional liars and the dangerously self-deceptive".

That statement sums it up nicely. While deep in woo and mayhem, there were a few select people who stood and watched my decline without making any attempt to intervene, not one peep. They just stood around and watched the 'show', it would seem. Years later, I asked them 'Why?'. Why and how could someone sit idly by and watch such horrible things happening to someone else. Their response was, 'Would it have made a difference?'.

Thanks Orac and the others here for trying to make a difference. Although there have been many such people, over the past couple of years, a few people here have stood out as saying things that have had particular beneficial impact in one way or another . I would like to express gratitude to them as well. Thank you Lilady, Narad, and a very special thanks to Prometheus, as it was his blog and writings that I first found. I wish he would write more.

Personally, I hate this blog and everything it stands for. I especially can't stand Blake's Seven, or that blasted box of blinking lights that labels itself ORAC. I hate hate hate hate it all, and you all. Which is why I keep coming back here, because you and your damn science ruin my Woo-Woo Scams and .. . Oh wait.. . isn't this Opposites Day ?
But seriously; love the work Orac. and the blog (and yes, I even like Blake's 7 ) Keep up the good work !

Sialis: You should not have singled me and Narad out for special mentions. I know you meant that because we have the Bat Sh*t Signals in our possession, we could call upon the Th1Th2 bot to engage Thingy.

Once Thingy was engaged, the real pros could then have grown-up conversations.

P.S. I am missing Promethius too.

I come to this blog for the essay and now - very much so - for the comments of current erudite regulars & drop-ins. For example, there's also currently a great thread running on the "Quackademic medicine versus cancer quackery" post. I "learn" strange things from the trolls & woo/quack crowd, too.

There is certainly some value in preaching to the choir. I might be a skeptic and a rational person, but I know very little about medicine. This blog is one of the sources I actually trust.

I managed to talk your blog into being considered a reliable source on Wikipedia on Robert O. Young's page. I often learn what I take from here and work on relevant pages on the wiki. Hope that helps.

This phenomenon crosses all big arguments. My induction was on the evolution side of the creationism debate that flared up a few years ago. You hope somebody somewhere is watching and learning. It seems fruitless at times, but if we don't try at all, we will fail surely. And remember the mantra: It's for the lurkers!

Io, the choir can always keep learning how to spread the word...

By the way, Young libeled you when he threatened to sue Wikipedia if we didn't remove the criticism:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Robert_O._Young&diff=pre…
"This is Robert O. Young and I am demanding that you take down the attacks on me personally concerning Kim Tinkham and Quakewatchers. You are posting felacious information that cannot be substantiated. I have never met [Orac], He knows nothing about the Kim Tinkham case other then what he makes up. I am recommending you take down my entire listing NOW before litigation The blogs any references you have sited are full of editorializing and personal opinion and NOT based upon fact. They are not formal articles that you would expect from legitimate source. I will give you 36 hours to take all personal attacks, felacious statements from blogs and editorials before I begin to legal recouse. "

Sorry about that last comment...I understand if you don't post it.

While it is true that I am a skeptic and didn’t need sorting out on that front, I have learned a whole lot of new stuff about how to refute a lot of the woo arguments, and about cancer as well. Not only am I able to get people to question their woo, but I’ve quit being a shruggie and rid myself of several “friends” who were only driving me batty with their devotion to all things woo.

I love your blog - and I 'sit on the fence' a bit on some things. I'm actually what you'd call a 'scam' practitioner probably, even though my approach is very 'atypical' - but I am an 'outcast' in my group because I want to see us push for real evidence for what we do and what we're taught, and I faithfully pick apart the crap that is generated as 'evidence' as best I can. (The same goes for some rubbish 'research' supporting physiotherapy approaches - sometimes they are no better!) I refuse to tout 'supplements' and other unproven crap even though it makes me far less successful than my contemporaries. Since becoming more interested in the real issues and learning how to be more critical, I actually went from anti-vax to vaxxing my child, which really threw my contemporaries into a tizzie! Anyway, just to say that your stuff is valuable to people in all camps and I hope you keep blogging forever !

@ LHT:

What type of practitioner are you?
Seriously, I am not out to attack you: if you are seeking evidence and 'pick apart' crap evidence- well, good for you!

I am assuming that you are either a massage therapist or chiro ( since you mention physiotherapy)- both of which HAVE applications in reality that are often vastly inflated by the woo factions.

And your changed position on vaccines is a spectatcular achievement which should be congratulated!

Just want to add my voice. When the woo about breast cancer gets too deep at another site I visit, I can come here for a dose of sanity.I have learned and have passed on what I learned.

Well, I was told my Wikipedia work was a joke, as you are already a big name source on Wiki. I didn't know that. Never mind.

Long-time lurker, first-time caller. I've always been vaguely pro-vaccine and pro-science generally, but I found this site quite useful in starching my spine when discussing vaccinating our baby with my wife (not an easy task as our older boy has autism). So keep up the good work!

I discovered your blog while trying to make sense of all the anti-vax BS shortly after my son was diagnosed with autism in 2003. It was a great help to me and I, for one, appreciate it.

You're saving kid's lives, dude.

End of argument.

Dammit... Saving kids' lives, even. #grammarnazi

I had doubts about the efficacy of the vaccines and you helped to make my mind. I used to confuse the homeopathy with the natural therapies and thought that none of them could do any harm. I thougt that accupuncture could work, and that the positive thinking was very important in the process of healing.
You helped me to learn to be more skeptic .

@Denice Hi. I'm an osteopath. (And I don't crack necks or do ‘cranial’ - to the horror of some colleagues!)

Sadly most of my colleagues saw a class on research methods (delivered by an academic researcher) in a very defensive way - that the lecturer was 'attacking' the profession etc - but the point was to help people develop the ability to be professionally self critical.

I get really annoyed at how small bits of truth about a mechanism of action - or theories about plausible mechanisms of action - get spoken about and inflated as if they are the TRUTH and then are a justification and used as defence against further questions...when, although sometimes interesting in and of themselves, they are not nearly worth or equal to any of that. Anyway, even though it’s hard to get access to full papers as a self employed clinician, I get what I can and read what I can and do more academically delivered CPD (often not 'geared' toward osteopaths, sadly, I'd like to change that) and I talk a lot with people who are very proud 'sceptics' and read those kinds of blogs. I find it enjoyable and rewarding and I like to think that my questioning leanings are of benefit to my patients as well, both directly and indirectly. (I must say I rarely participate but on this thread I thought I might!)

I read this and other skeptical blogs, and send articles to friends and family all the time. I do read the comments but don't often comment because, a. I have nothing intelligent to add, or b. someone more intelligent has already stated what I wanted to say more eloquently.

You and other skeptical bloggers are doing a great service, keep up the good fight!

I would like to add that the internet has one unique property - it's like accelerated Real Life. Due to the internet in general and several blogs in particular, I've experienced far more people and discussions than I could ever do IRL.

What this allows me to do is to "profile" people. Well, not profile individuals, but to get an idea of how they think. Some people I think are perfectly nice people in all other respects are CTers. "Did you hear about the Clintons and ____?". So I know not to respond "No, tell me more." unless I'm desperate for entertainment.

I can choose to ignore certain types of trolls, unless I'm interested in tearing down their carefully constructed mythologies - again, if I'm bored and need entertainment or to educate lurkers.

In a recently acquired interest, I am in several groups and I can tailor my responses from "That's ridiculous!" to "This is what we know about ____.". When a group doesn't trust science or The Medical Establishment, the best approach can be stating provable facts and seeing if anyone wants to discuss further.

@ LHT:

Your contributions will certainly be appreciated @ RI because you are perhaps more entrenched in fighting woo on a daily basis than most of us: I'm an on-looker and surveyor who merely writes about it.

Today my wife emailed me a NY Times article on how acupuncture is proven to work against placebos in blinded trials. If I had never read RI, I would have shifted uncomfortably. Instead, I looked at the actual JAMA publication and whether acupuncture beat out fake acupuncture.
This blog isn't just boo/yay stuff. It keeps us on our toes and makes us better understand how science and medicine work- and how they are misunderstood.

[One more thing: I hope you review the NY Times coverage of the new Vickers study. Vickers claims that acupuncture is only modestly outperforming sham acupuncture in some pain types and not in any statistically significant ways. Going to the source and looking for controls, statistical significance, and contrary findings in the trials is something I do with medical news now that I didn't before.]

@ Nick: A poster *commented* on the Science Based Medicine and linked the NY Times and the JAMA articles. Here's my reply:

"Neither of your links to articles, referred to the actual NCCAM statement and opinion of the study.

http://nccam.nih.gov/research/results/spotlight/091012

Did you happen to miss this from the NCCAM-sponsored study? How would this statement about the “larger component” affect the result of the meta-analysis?

“A recent NCCAM-funded study, employing individual patient data meta-analyses and published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, provides the most rigorous evidence to date that acupuncture may be helpful for chronic pain. In addition, results from the study provide robust evidence that the effects of acupuncture on pain are attributable to two components. The larger component includes factors such as the patient’s belief that treatment will be effective, as well as placebo and other context effects. A smaller acupuncture-specific component involves such issues as the locations of specific needling points or depth of needling…..”

Reuben at The Poxes blog has posted a great (and naughty) article in defense of us *Pharma Shills* and Wakefield and the support he receives from the AoA crowd. Watch for his take-down of "the stalker".

http://thepoxesblog.blogspot.com/2012/09/and-im-pharma-shill.html#comme…

Three words:
Aids.
South Africa.
David Resnick.

Its not just a battle of ideas.

This is a bit off topic. There is a new energy healer in Cambodia. A 3 year-old dubbed 'The Holy Boy'.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFZcMq97otE

Cookie please...

Just noticed this from Venia, quoting a gem from Robert O. Young, on the 9th @ 11:05 pm :

You are posting felacious information that cannot be substantiated.

I must have missed the felacious information about Young, which sounds intriguing, unless of course he meant 'fallacious'.

@ Krebiozen: I missed UV's "felacious" comment. Maybe UV posted more comments about Young's sex life and they ended up in the moderation hopper? Is there anyway to retrofit that old blinky box computer, to allow us to read those titillating comments?

BTW, Happy Rosh Hashanah to all our Jewish friends.

Long may you blog oh blinking box! I am a long term, but silent, reader and appreciate the wonderful ammunition you supply for when I discuss all forms of woo (but immunisation in particular) with a number of relatives who are sadly susceptible to the call of "alternative" medicine.

I have shared your blogs and links and used your writing to help improve my children's critical thinking skills. I should have said it before, but, thank you for the clarity you supply on these issues. please keep it up as you supply the bullets for many of us to fire; many of us who lack the ability to manufacture said bullets left to our own devices.

Orac, I think what you do for the most part is a great service to humanity. Something I've noticed, however, is that you tend to make others wrong in a seemingly condescending way. This adds to the humor of your posts, but it may also be increasing the hostility of those who you make wrong.

Perhaps focusing on what's going well in the vaccine community, such as honoring figures who apply the scientific method with high fidelity, would also be beneficial.

Hi Orac,
I'm one of your regular readers, although this is my first time commenting. I first came across your blog last year, while looking for information on homeopathy. My mother was a fervent user of homeopathy since before I was born, so I grew up thinking it was "herbolary" medicine, that it worked, and I even used to say that it "boosts your immune system" (I now feel ashamed every time I remember that :D). I started to question homeopathy after getting a bad case of gastritis which just wouldn't heal. I read a book called "bad science" by Ben Goldacre, which has a chapter on homeopathy. When I realized it was only water, I started looking for more information on the internet, and I came across one of your posts. I think I really laughed out loud while reading it, your description of it as "magical thinking" couldn't be more accurate. I forwarded the link to my sister and later we had a talk with our mom about homeopathy. I am proud to say that none of us uses it anymore. I kept coming back because I do not specialize in medicine, and found your posts educating and funny. What better way to spend some free minutes than reading something that helps you identify the quacks and at the same time makes you laugh?
After being here for around one year I can say I am now able to identify quackery (which in Mexico abounds), and stay away from it.
So, I would like to say now, thank you for your posts! the blog is awesome. Keep it going!

The french philosopher and economist, Yann Moulier-Boutang, has an idea of the "pollination society".

In short it's about how the reward for the bee's activities is in the honey, but the result of the bee's activities for the world is the (much larger and more important effect of) pollination.

So the skeptic blogger will be rewarded with a little bit of honey; the occational positive feedback, the joy of learning and writing. But the ramifications for the world are much wider and harder to pinpoint - much in the same way as it's hard to tell exactly how many trees or fruits one particular bee has contributed to (not to mention the animals and other plants that have been able to survive as a result).

How many readers have been swayed one step closer to rationality after reading a post? How many conversations have been influenced by someone saying "..you know I just read something about that, and I'm not sure that study you mentioned really shows vaccines do not work."? How many have shared the blog through social media? How many have been inspired (or provoked) to investigate the topic further? How many friends or family of policy-makers have stumbled across a post, or facebook-coment or tweet, and mentioned the problem about too much woo in the world during dinner, or while grabbing a coffee? How many people in situations of power have themselves come across these arguments? How many skeptics in the trenches have reached for an argument and come across the perfect post, thereby giving undecided spectators a chance to check the claims of a woo-proponent?

We have no idea.

But if there is enough well written and well communicated rationality being put forward by enough people, there is a chance that something will take hold somewhere. And sometimes that somewhere can be somewhere important.

But we do not know this when we sit by the keyboard, or talk to a friend, or talk at a conference, or hit "share" on facebook. All we know is that the future is shaped by billions of people making billions of decisions, some of those are more important than others, and if we don't supply a steady stream of rationality to influence those decisions then we will have to take our chances with whatever else is circulating out there.

So yeah, please keep up the good work!

(But there's nothing stopping us from doing science on this! Where are the behavioural scientists, the psychologists and the sociologists who can map how people are affected by skeptical blogposts?)

A bit late, but I want to add my support for you, so that you dash away those crazy doubts about whether your blog accomplishes anything. As many others have said, it sure does! Thank you!

I first came across your blog when I looked into something my friend was into - draining her lymph nodes by bouncing on a trampoline. I thought it sounded ridiculous so I researched it & came across one of your immensely entertaining & informative "Friday Doses of Woo: Bouncing away the toxins". You proved my belief, that it was complete rubbish. I just needed the basic facts, to be able to put into words, the argument against what she was promoting. Of course, she continues to bounce away, in the belief she's draining those lymph nodes because the proof for her, is that "she feels better" after she does it. No real harm in that version of quackery but I do appreciate knowing the facts behind it, and to stop worrying that my lymph nodes will grow into the size of grapefruit from not bouncing.

I kept reading (& continue to do so regularly) & found a lot of what my friend, & others, believe in is rubbish, including the expensive bottles of worthless homeopathic cold & flu remedies she got us to buy. Others have mentioned that they thought homeopathy was just some herbal thing, which is what my husband & I thought. It's an understatement to say we were shocked at the sheer deception behind that quackery & how dismayed we are at how prevalent it is in society.

We share a holiday house with our quack friend. She kept insisting we needed some special water filter because our bodies are too acid apparently. Your blog saved us a few thousand dollars when we got the hard facts about this scam from one of your articles. Thank you!

Blogs like yours are valuable assets in today's world of lazy, fluffy journalism. The media spends more time reporting on the antics of celebrities & politicians than rip-off scams that are draining public healthcare dollars, wasting people's money, & even causing physical harm.

I spend less on supplements (taking only D because of a deficiency) & have stopped wasting time & emotion worrying about non-existent health issues - whether my lymph nodes need to be bounced empty or if my body's acidic. I also appreciate having my eyes opened, with hard facts and real science, to chiropractic, acupuncture, eastern "medicine" & all the other time-wasting, money-wasting quackery out there.

Thank you!

Hey Orac,
I never comment but I read your blog religiously. I found it when a friend of mine suggested I "do my research" about the benefits of homeopathy, since I was naturally skeptical. Once I figured out what homeopathy really was I didn't need anyone to tell me it was bunk, but I still very much enjoyed reading your take. I came back when someone told me that raw food would help with my lupus, and again when another friend (don't judge, I have rational friends too) claimed that vaccines caused her son's autism. I guess I was sort of a natural skeptic, but I would never have had all the scientific backing I needed to really justify my skepticism until I started reading your blogs. I just don't feel well-educated enough to comment most of the time, and I'm sure others are like me. Keep up the good work!

For what it's worth, I'd say that all this blogging does largely what vaccines do. It raises herd immunity to total bollocks so that - even if a small handful of people fall for said bollocks - the vast majority will not.

@KRH: "(But there’s nothing stopping us from doing science on this! Where are the behavioural scientists, the psychologists and the sociologists who can map how people are affected by skeptical blogposts?)"

Now THAT would be a very interesting use of applied social psychological research time!

Please to excuse, resetting cookie on laptop....

It's worth it. Cf comments above plus my 2 cents. You've given me access not only to vax info (esp Gardisil, the Mother-in-Law is addicted to the local tabloid) but also to insights into a host of medical/ social problems, some of which are part of my family's daily life.
The comments YOUR BLOG generates are worth as much as the posts themselves (O.K. Thingy et.al. excepted). No blog = no comments. I second the pollination analogy.

Sorry, cookie please.

Accomplishes zero. Just further supports that those who see truth, hold on to it tighter.

What "truth" do you mean, Roger?

Skeptical About Skeptics

sciencepunk — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 09:48:08 +0000

Skeptical About Skeptics

This is an adaptation of the talk I gave at Westminster Skeptics in the Pub on Monday 2nd August. You can hear an audio transcript of the talk at the Pod Delusion website.
I was invited to stage the talk again at the Winchester SITP, a recording of which is here.

I'm very much a child of the skeptical community. I started writing about bad science in 2004, in a scissors-and-glue zine titled War On Error (a very droll play on words at the time, and a lot easier than coming up with a twist on Overseas Contingency Operation). Eventually this moved online, morphing into SciencePunk. Over the years, however, I've drifted away from this scene. I don't write about electrosensitivity scams like I used to, or dig up interesting stories of historical charlatans. I don't label myself a skeptic. I don't blog so frequently. Partly this is out of necessity, and partly because I don't want to be associated with a community whom I've found can be blinkered, confrontational, and self-aggrandising.

It's worth making a brief interjection here about who this nebulous group of skeptics I'm referring to are. Any attempt to mark out a precise constituency of who is, and who is not, part of the skeptic community is an impossible task, and one I don't believe there's any value in doing. Safe to say, if you promote an evidence-based approach and critical thinking in the areas of policy, media, and legal reform, you're probably part of it. For the purposes of this essay, I'll use terms like science blogger, skeptic community / movement / acitivist interchangeably; though they do not form a homogenous group, they do have prevalent attitudes and demographics like any self-assembling group of people.

I've watched the skeptic movement grow over the years, from a fringe grassroots collective to a body that has achieved remarkable successes in a short time. But it is still a young movement, and this means that it is not able to support the actions I might want to pursue. If I was interested in environmentalism, there are any number of groups that I could donate money to this very instant; by tomorrow I could be picking up litter along the nation's beaches or helping to survey wildlife in threatened ecosystems. To be a skeptic, things are not so simple. The physical, financial, professional, and organisational infrastructure is not yet in place. So instead, if I want to share a love of science and critical thinking, I'm forced to use the instutional bodies that already exist - most obviously TV, print and radio news and entertainment media.

But equally, if this infrastructure were to exist, I might nevertheless find myself steering clear of it, because the attitudes and the behaviour of many within the skeptic community I find dispiriting. More and more I feel we are limiting ourselves in who we choose to speak to, how we engage with them, and by who we make space for within our community.

There will be many for whom the skeptic community is exactly that, a group of like-minded people to share gripes and groans with about the latest nonsense to infiltrate schools or government, and a safe place to develop ideas and opinions on these matters. That's certainly how I used it in the early days. But a lot of people will eventually find they want to graduate from this by advancing their philosophies in the real world. This essay is really for that second group of people, who want to reach out and engage the wider public.

You talkin' to me?
As a writer, I think the most powerful thing I can do is change someone's mind. Giving someone an understanding of a particular set of facts is one thing, but being able to shape their opinion on those facts (for better or worse) is a God-like ability. Teachers certainly know this, and it's why they hold such a powerful position in society (why else do you think fundamentalist religious groups are so keen on forming their own schools?). If you can shape opinions, you don't need political power or money or physical force to advance your ideals - people will do that for you. Unfortunately a lot of skepticism I see focusses on proving the speaker is right, rather than changing the mind of the listener.

The internet is a wonderful thing, and has allowed groups of people to find one another and work collectively over huge distances, and is very much at the heart of the skeptic movement. But it has also lent an illusion that the online world is an accurate reproduction of the world at large, when it is something of a hall of mirrors. Even this blog is victim to that recursive effect. Writing in a particular style, on a particular subject, from a particular point of view, all this shapes my audience, in effect choosing like-minded individuals who are fairly likely to agree with me on a lot of points. This can create something of a confirmation bias - because unless I come into contact with contradictory views, from someone I respect, I'm unlikely to really be challenged on many of my views. And similarly, lazy or false views will thrive longer than they would in the harsh environment of the outside world.

But step back a moment and see the wider picture - who is actually on the internet? Allegedly seven million people in UK are illiterate, and might not be able to read my blog even if they wanted to. A further half million are not on the internet. Of those that are, who reads science blogs? People use the internet in different ways, and while there's a prevalent view amongst wired skeptics that if the answer can be found in a Google search, it should be obvious. It's not, and that's a particularly silly thing to believe. I could print this essay out and tack it to my front door, and technically it would be publicly available, but I wouldn't kid myself to think that it was accessible to everyone. Here, the inaccessiblility is a physical one, but we shouldn't consider behavioural inaccessibility any less influential. And yet, there's a prevalent attitude of "I blogged it, so it's a problem solved". Instead we should ask ourselves: what efforts have we made to reach the people concerned? Do all the people who get ripped off by homeopaths read science blogs? Do mums worried about MMR google the problem or are they more influenced by their relatives, family, friends? If you've written a post responding to something incorrect a journalist said, did you contact them and tell them? Did you get in touch with your local school to find out if you could help them write and distribute clear info on the risks of MMR?

The apogee of this insularity is the Facebook campaign, and its sibling the Twitter hashtag. So let me say this: a Facebook group is not a campaign. A Twitter hashtag is not a campaign. These are your friends agreeing with you. Now, that's not to say there isn't value in them - they are an excellent and efficient system for displaying a groundswell of support. And Dr Evan Harris made a good point after my talk that this in itself was a form of campaigning; but I don't feel these wildfires of synchonised cheering really change minds, which is what I'm focussing on today.

Whenever I'm not sure if something is important outside my immediate sphere, I think of my mum. She doesn't have a science degree, she didn't go to university. She is not a wired, white, yuppie boy like me. And so she's the perfect foil. If I have the choice to blog about the latest Gillian McKeith / Ben Goldacre dust up, or the cloned milk hysteria, I can ask: which is my mum more likely to know about? Which is she more likely to care about? Which would be a more useful topic for her to read what I had to say? A lot of people at my talk misunderstood this point, and thought I was discussing how I needed to simplify my blogging to make it accessible for an older, non-science woman. This is wrong. What I'm urging here is the consider someone completely unlike yourself and those around you, and ask yourself how your actions meet their needs. Sure, you could tailor your writing to your existing readers, but it's your existing non-readers who are always the bigger piece of pie. Why not aim for them?

"Evidence or STFU"
Time and again, I've been told that they've found skeptics' aggressive, bullying tone the biggest turn off. This is a strange thing, because we're constantly feting ourselves on how we use facts, not rhetoric, to support our positions; so why do we of any group seem to rely the most on this bluster?

Personally, I find this festishisation of facts both ineffective and cowardly. Firstly, facts don't speak for themselves - however much you might like to think otherwise. As humans, we respond to stories, emotional hooks. All the best campaigners from Greenpeace to the Republican party have cottoned onto this. Skeptics are still catching up. Perhaps it's because a lot of us come from a scientific background, where facts are used to resolve differences of opinion. That doesn't mean we should abandon them, but it does mean that we have to understand that in order to reach people, you need more than facts. It's often said "The plural of anecdote is not data", and that's true. The plural of anecdote is a convincing argument. If you're the kind of person who looks at the customer reviews before purchasing something on Amazon then you know this already.

What a lot of skeptics have a hard time grasping is that facts are only one small part of the decision-making process. Past experience, culture, emotion, values, morals, politics, philosophy, religion, family ties and a dozen other factors also play a part. So if you think that the only argument needed against homeopathy is to point out its chemical absurdity, you're ignoring all the other factors that play a role in a person's decision making. As one woman who wrote to me said:

"When mothers decide to not vaccinate their children, they are choosing to do so with only the very, very, very best intentions in the world. That they've been lead to believe not vaccinating is the best thing for them does not mean that they are stupid, evil, ill-intentioned, moronic. They've just been told a better story by 'the other side'."

Many of the people reading this article will regularly consume alcohol, or smoke cigarettes: we know the facts about why these habits are harmful (and even dangerous), but we continue nonetheless because our judgements come to rest on a lot more than the facts. In addition, by focussing on the facts, we fail to make any attempt to understand why people engage in these behaviours, and without that understanding it's very unlikely that we'll be able to bring those people round to our way of thinking.

Secondly, when you argue from facts, you're laying out the battleground in a way that will best suit you. You know that the facts are in your favour, you go into that argument with a resolute mind and that arrogance will show. As science-types we don't really like to argue about personal judgements, emotions, moral stances - uncertain footing where there's rarely a clear-cut answer. But that is the real world. And by concentrating solely on facts, we embrace a binary method of thinking where everyone is either right or wrong (usually the latter if they don't agree with us) and ignores the complexity of personal decision-making. This us-and-them mentality has come to infect large swaths of the skeptic community's mindset. Even Cllr John Dixon, present at my talk, had made me uncomfortable with his now-famous tweet "I didn't know the Scientologists had a church on Tottenham Court Road. Just hurried past in case the stupid rubs off". This idea that we are somehow tainted by associating with people whose views we find objectionable is I think an unhealthy one, not least because it homogenises the skeptic community. There are plenty of Christians and Muslims who oppose homeopathy, and plenty of chiropractic users who object to the use of libel laws to stifle debate. Skeptic tribalism drives them away.

Who wants to be in my gang?
Following on from this, who do we consciously or unconsciously exclude from our community? I've already described how a macho element drives away a lot of people. There's also the constant sneering against humanities graduates. There's the self-perpetuating majority of white, middle-class, middle-age men. The sheer number of women who've contacted me in the last week to share the condescending, combatative and downright offensive behaviours they've encountered at skeptic gatherings is nothing short of depressing. There's the venues we choose for discussion, whether they be online forums or pubs, that can be unwelcoming or innaccessible to a huge number of people (although, as David Allen Green pointed out, pubs are often the only affordable venues to run events in). I'd argue that even the lecture format of Skeptics in the Pub is flawed. With no provision to draw people into groups, it can be quite intimidating and unfriendly for a lone person to attend.
Although skeptics often insist that there is no creedo or manifesto to their club, certain groups are singled out for hostility. Here's an example:

"As a Green Party member, I've received a lot of abuse. I'm in the Green Party Science Policy Working Group, and we've spent about two years working on de-hippyifying our Science policy. I think we've come a long way, and our drugs policy is probably the most progressive of the parties. But whenever I mention that I'm in the Greens, I get dismissed immediately on the basis of our animal testing policy. And its usually pretty personal attacks: that my political views are stupid, that the Greens are the worst party in politics as a result. This doesn't seem to take in any other factors: I'd rather support a party I disagreed with on animal testing, than a party who condoned torture, or canned legal aid for asylum seekers"

We can't afford to labour under the delusion that the skeptic community is an all-welcoming and tolerant one. It is not. And it's only by considering who we speak to, and how we speak to them, that we'll come to understand why this is.

After my talk, several people complained that I was rudely attacking the skeptics community without giving any answers to the problems I'd identified. I don't want this to be perceived as an attack. This is a cry for help to improve the fantastic community that made me the person I am today. And the reason I haven't given answers to the problems is because I'm not sure what those solutions might be.

I've already heard from a huge number of people about their negative experiences within the skeptic community. But now it's time to be constructive. I'm opening this to the floor - how do you think we can make the skeptic community better, more welcoming, more enagaging? Is this something that will only happen when it incorporates into recognisable institutions such as a registered charity? Can a disparate collective of people be persuaded to adopt certain behaviours, and if so, how? And what might those guidelines be?

OTHER PEOPLE'S THOUGHTS:

Skeptical About Skeptics? | Purely a figment of your imagination
Skepticism - What Now? | Tom Morris
#WestSkep - How to Win An Argument With Joe Public | David Hartery
Yet Another Blog Post About WestSkep | The Thought Stash
Science Punk at Westskep (the aftermath) | The Thought Stash
SciencePunk - A Critique of Skepticism | James Streetly's Blog
And somewhat tangentially:
The role of the science blogging community in the advancement of science | JLVernonPhD

sciencepunk Sat, 08/07/2010 - 05:48

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"I don't label myself a skeptic." (Frank Swain)

Nevertheless, Frank, you have proved by your behaviour and your attempt of "critique of scepticism" that you are just a skeptic... ;)

"First of all, there is no "skeptical community" in any organised sense. Its anarchic nature is, for me, one of its attraction." (David Colquhoun)

David exactly noticed. Anarchy! And it is fair to say that Frank's efforts to usurp the power in skeptic's anarchic crowds has failed... :P

Have you deleted my comment, Frank? ;)

Ha-ha-ha!

Your reaction proves that your are weak skeptic-crip :)
No. You will not a leader in this business. And don't dance a twist before David Colquhoun ;) It is useless. He will never cede his power to you. Yes, he says about "anarchy". But it is merely because HE is a leader among your skeptic crowd. And none of you (neither Ben Goldacre nor Alan Henness, neither Evan Harris nor Jack-of-Kent, neither you nor anybody else) will be a leader higher than David Colquhoun! :P

He is "Akela" in your pack of wolves... :) And you will wait loooooong when grey wolf will miss....

Thanks for writing this, Frank - it's good to finally have your voice in the debate that's sprung up around you as a result of the talk!

Important that you can clarify points that you may have been misquoted/misunderstood on etc. Such is the wonder of the blogosphere I guess.

Re: opening up skeptics events/reconsidering SitP format - I have thought sometimes that the talks can be a bit too long.

I always try to arrive quite early to talk to people (and get a decent seat) and usually end up staying later than I planned. That's because I go to see my friends and to make new ones, the talk is kind of a bonus.

Perhaps if the talk were a little bit shorter with a bit more time for discussion before questions, the whole event would be a bit more enticing for newbies.

I'd be interested to hear speakers' views on this - was it hard to squish what you wanted to say into the time slot, or would it be nicer to have a shorter 'presentation' maybe with longer 'group discussion' or time to mingle?

A lot of speakers get swamped after the talk and people from further afield have to rush for trains etc.

So I reckon there might be some merit in that, depending on what everyone else thinks :)

While appreciating some of your points, they seem to me to be greatly exaggerated

First of all, there is no "skeptical commumity" in any organised sense. Its anarchic nature is, for me, one of its attraction. There are no rules, no list of things which you must believe in order to join. Just a lot of free thinkers who may well have overlapping beliefs but who are all doing their own thing.

I find it hard to believe that meetings like Skeptics in the Pub are as daunting as you make out. Cerianly I have met a lot of people there, including women a third of my age, who are introduced, or who introduce themselves, and who seem quite happy to talk about matters of mutual interest. It is no more daunting than going into any other room where you don't know any of the people at the party. That can always be difficult if youi are shy.

I think that you also mistake the targets. My aim at least is to influence governmet ministers and vice-chancellors. It isn't to attack individual homeopaths or whatever (unless, of course, they are killing people) and it certainny isn't my intention (or that of anyone else that I know) to attack the customers who use homeopathy. The chances of ever converting a homeopath are negligible and the chances of converting their customers is even slimmer. On the other hand. vice-chancellors can be converted (though sadly public ridicule seems to be what works with them, rather than reasoned argument).

Although I may write about the topic in a fairly aggressive way, whenever an alternative medicine advocate leaves a comment on the blog, or writes to me (sometimes very abusively), I try to answer in a polite and conciliatory way, and I think most other people who write on the topic do the same.

I think your talk also showed some confision between skeptics on one hand, amd public engagement in science on the other. These are different aims, and they are done by different (if overlapping) groups of people. I agree with Goldacre that sometimes bad science can be a good way of explaining what good science is. A lecture on the importance of randomistaion is not going to get the public very excited, but explaing what can go wrong when you don't randomise may be much more engaging. Perhaps that is why Goldacre's column and blog have a very much greater readership than straight science sites, especially those that are run by government or by univsrities as a PR excercise for the institution.

I attended my first SITP meeting recently, I found them very welcoming.
I'm female and in my early 20s, it never crossed my mind that I would be meeting a bunch of middle aged men. I didn't, the numbers were near 50/50.

I did find the idea of going to a pub a bit daunting at first, but it was held in a lovely relaxing pub, without music blaring.

Although I do agree with the facts aren't everything argument, or the Dawkins approach to skepticism. You can explain the faults in homeopathy without being rude.

I guess I'm taking my own steps by changing my tactics when I do protest (such as the AVN lecture) and with the people I network with. Next year I hope to do a communications degree, focusing on a few science communication units. I'd suggest more people who are hoping to measure efficacy, et al, get in touch with people like Michael 'Tribal Scientist' McRae and Alom Shaha, and attend workshops or units in communication skills, sci comm or public speaking, which are available in a variety of forms.

All of us still have a lot to learn - particularly from those already in the system who have the same goals and have already 'been there' or are already running initiatives that we just don't know about. Often we assume too much in that regard:
'No one else is doing this, it's up to us!!!'
'Er, actually, there's a two-million dollar government campaign already funded and a team of publicists preparing a report in conjunction with the Health Department to reflect the issues and run it in a specially printed feature in the state newspaper, and a free seminar at the local hospital to directly target the audience who need it the most, in a non-judgmental fashion...'
'Oh, we should have someone from our out-of-state skeptical group on their hospital seminar to represent the skeptics!'
'...what makes you think they'd welcome that??'

"I think that you also mistake the targets. My aim at least is to influence governmet ministers and vice-chancellors."

That's nothing but hubris. Effecting public policy in a democracy is only as powerful as public support lets it be. You will never be able to counteract harmful practices such as homepathy when it has more public support than you. Those ministers and vice-chancellors still have to get elected, and unfortuntely (as you admit), reasoned arguments do not win them over as much as public outcry. So as much as you can turn your nose up at persuading Joe Public, they have to be engaged with in order to change things. That, I think, is the point.

I think that the post is reasonable, but i think that there has been an overly defensive attitude from many of the skeptic bloggers.. I don't think Frank is advocating a mass withdrawal from the idea of scientific skepticism. Just an examination and thoughfulness about the ways that we present said skepticism.

It is not enough to present a graph, come up with a hashtag or snicker at one another as we make fun of people. There has to be a thoughful approach taken to every argument. CAM merchants have framed the debate using a considered lexicon that skews arguments in the public sphere (choice, alternative, compimentary etc) that we cannot possibly address without adopting something similiar. Facts are not persuasive on their one. "The plural of anecdote is not data" - this is true, but they're not mutually exlusive. We need to keep the facts but add coherent and persuasive argumentation geared towards engaging those who are not already part of the "skeptic community".

If skepticism is to move beyond a twitter talking shop of scientists and rationalists, it has to start raising its' public profile. While I don't agree that #ten23 was a failure in this regard, I think that it did fetishise the idea that it is medically ineffective. Thats only persuasive to people who believe that its medical efficacy is something that can be proven. Richard Dawkins got such a high profile because he outlined the harm of the existence of religion within society at all. He bypassed the whole "you cant prove whether God exists or not argument" by simply stating the concrete harms to scientific progress and society of the existence of religion. I don't agree with Dawkins, but I think that a more nuanced approach to campaigning would benefit things like #ten23. It is possible to have more than one argument, and to use arguments that are not backed up by tables and graphs, in addition to the factual arguments. The best debaters can use a combination of fact and emotion.

As I've said previously (comments here), I agree with the generalities of Frank's argument, but dispute some of the specifics.

I think it would be interesting to extend this critical reflection into who it is you want to reach out too. To paraphrase Lincoln, you cannot please all of the people all of the time, so I think it is inevitable that any activity is going to alienate somebody. This is why, in my opinion, I would separate the unwelcomeness some feel from the skeptical community into two categories.

1. Those who hold a general skeptical outlook but feel unwelcome because skepticism traditionally operates outside of their cultural milieu, so that the prospect of boisterous alcohol fuelled discussion is unappealing. They may even hold views they know are unscientific, particularly with respect to religion and don't fancy the prospect of a tedious debate they've no doubt had many times before about the evidence for a god.

This group I think is excluded from much skeptical activity they might otherwise like to get involved with.

2. True Believers. This group are firm in their beliefs, and no amount of arguing, rational or emotional, is going to change their minds. If their mind does change then it is likely to be as a sudden Damascene conversion rather than persuasion.

It is this latter group who get upset the most in public by skeptical activity and are probably the target of most of the upsetting behaviour you have identified. I think it is unlikely that skepticism will ever manage to reach out to this group, and it probably wouldn't be skepticism if it ever did.

However, other communities may judge skeptics on how they respond to those that they oppose and this needs to be remembered, but I hate to say this, and it goes against what I generally believe, but nastiness and deceit can be very effective tools. Frank cites various political campaigning groups, whether formalised parties, or issue specific concerns, as examples of effective outreach, but these groups are notorious for lying, deceiving and/or dissembling in the name of their cause. They don't do this because they are evil, but because they have a belief, not just in the rightness of their cause, but that the ends justify the means and that inconvenient observations can be ignored.

This is something I believe the broad skeptical community (including those who would prefer to maintain a polite distance) generally don't do. The criticism, whether polite with tea and cake or ferocious with bile and expletive, tends to be offered from a position that the critic is willing to caveat and clarify.

Perhaps the reputation of skepticism can be increased by making this clear?

I must admit to being erm, skeptical about Frank's talk having only seen the Twitter feedback etc, having not been there on the night. I'm already quite uncomfortable with the idea that skepticism has to be "campaigning" at all, and so was a bit reluctant to be criticised for something I didn't want to do anyway. However after reading this essay I think he is basically correct in most of his assertions.

I do think the criticism of SiTP for being unwelcoming is well out of date though. It certainly used to be like that in the old days. I stopped attending for years after growing fed up of a room of "middle aged men" taking the piss out of speakers seemingly invited for this purpose. He'll be embarrassed at me saying so, but a huge amount of credit is due to Sid Rodrigues for turning SiTP into the welcoming and inclusive success it is today.

We should remember though that this is just an event in a pub set up by somebody. It isn't a skeptical party diktat. If somebody feels uncomfortable going to a pub meeting, then they should certainly set up a Skeptics in a coffee shop meeting, invite a speaker, and send out invites. I'd go along.

One other thing Frank. You mention a number of more effective campaigning organisations, some of whom think nothing of lying to further their message or aims. Is this really better?

I really think you're being too hard on facts. I have no interest in people's behaviours, as long as their choices are free and not ones born of delusion.

From left to right, this is like when Dawkins refuses to discuss the morality of evolution: he isn't "laying out the battleground in a way that will best suit [him]"; he's refusing to be sidetracked by irrelevant strawmen.

From right to left, if the goal of skeptical writing is to promote critical thinking then convincing someone not to use homeopathy using an anecdote is a loss. They're great emotional hooks, and it's wonderful if we have the power to change someone's mind about homeopathy, but we should be able to do it by discussing acupuncture.

It shouldn't be all about facts, but it should be about why facts are important, and specifically why they're more important than anecdote.

I also attended my first SITP meeting. It was a little hard to understand the structure in the first few minutes. But then I found a table with a nice couple and asked if I could sit. They were very friendly and we had the most excellent conversation.

Not everyone is quite so brazen as me, I know. So here's something simple I'd propose: set up a table for "newbies" or "flying solo" folks. A walmart-style greeter might have been nice.

@David Hartery

Please check your facts. It is not just hubris. All five honours BSc cousres in homeopathy were closed down after I revealed what nonsense they were teaching, and the VC of the Univerity of Central Lanacashire got a flea in his ear from the Information Tribunal after he tried, unsuccesfully, to conceal what they were teaching. By the time the battle to get the material was won, UCLAN had closed down not only its homeopathy degree but also all the rest of its degrees in junk science.

The fact is that blooging can get results in the real world, I wouldn't spend so much time on it if that were not the case. It may be surprising but the facts are their. I first realised the power of blogs when I ran some crude html pages in 2002, when Imperial tried to take over UCL. It took only five weeks to stop the whole daft idea, partly because of some big name supporters, but mainly because we could reveal things that the two VCs in question would have liked to keep secret

Thanks for writing about your talk, this is a perfect example of where blogging about something is useful - to share an idea to others that are interested or embarking on a similar thing.

I am looking at setting up a SiTP in my city, there's currently nothing like this and I thought it would be a good way of getting like minded people together and also a good way of meeting new people (I moved here quite recently and have struggled quite a bit to meet people outside work etc as there is a lack of events going on!).I want our Skeptics meetings to be inclusive and good fun! I also blog, mostly just to share ideas, I am new to this whole idea of skepticism and I recognise there are problems with it, but I think that sharing ideas is a good thing and if the skeptics platform is used properly (rather than just for name calling) it could be extremely useful.

"The fact is that blooging can get results in the real world, I wouldn't spend so much time on it if that were not the case. It may be surprising but the facts are their"

I have checked my facts. You can provide anecdotes, but where is large scale change? Where is an actuality of *any* political party living up to evidence based science, like they claimed in manifestos? Where is homeopathy funding on the NHS being cut? where is a reduction in the number of people trusting in CAM and other ineffective treatments?

Also, I didnt say blogs never did anything. Just feel that blogs are limited in what they can acheive.

Honestly. You can't change people's minds by force but that is what the current environment is. From my experience, the more a person has their own beliefs aggressively challenged the more they will want to keep them. Compromise in the form of trying to understand where the other side is coming from followed by efforts to meet them on their turf tends to help build the trust needed to them have meaningful discussion rather than shouting matches.

I'm probably a very touchy feely skeptic. I know that for individuals the gentle approach seems to make them more open to talking. Even in the classroom, the teachers you eat up every word from are the ones who are willing to come down to your level even though they have the authority to not need to. They want to engage you more than they explicitly want to make you see their point. They are also people who joyfully approach their subject matter--they love what they are doing and you cannot help but want to do it too.

and--crap I missed this when I was re-reading. I meant to say:
Compromise...tends to build the trust needed for them have meaningful discussion rather than shouting matches.

@David Hartery
They are not anecdotes. I suggest you search my blog for UCLAN, University of Salford, University of Westminster, Napier University etc etc

Politicians have proved harder than universities, but it is simply not true to say that homeopathic funding hasn't been cut. One homeopathic hospital has shut altogether, and finding has been reduced considerably for the Royal London Homoeopathic Hospital. All this information is easily found on the web.

I think you are being far too pessimistic about what blogs can achieve, and that's a pity if it discourages people for trying for themselves.

Loved the podcast of your talk, Frank, although I think you could have been more persuasive with the addition of a few more supporting points from both a psychological and communications perspective.

I think one of the things many strident skeptics don't understand is that there's a difference between the marketers of homeopathy and alternative medicines and the consumers. The cynicism needs to be saved for the marketers. In order to win over the consumers, you have to get some insight into their mindset, which comprises at least two distinct elements: a mistrust of alleopathic medicine because of the aggressive and often unscrupulous marketing efforts of Big Pharma (think Thalidomide or any another drug that's been recalled after being touted as THE CURE) and a knowledge base that includes some actual information. Willow bark DOES contain ASA and if you boil up some of it and drink it as tea, your headache probably *will* go away. Then there's the leech cures, which have been in, out and back in favour again (although admittedly leeches aren't being used in the same ways they used to be as a general cure-all). The conclusion of many who haven't studied science at the post-secondary level is that doctors and pharmacologists don't really know it all, so why trust them implicitly when that nice lady you work with tells you HER arthritis was cured by ingesting shark cartilage?

On a psychological level though, many of the most strident skeptics seem to have forgotten the old axiom that the person who loses their temper or shouts first in any argument is ultimately the one who loses the argument - because it indicates you've abandoned any attempt to persuade and are seeking dominance.

@Ruth Seeley
Are there not some straw men in your argument? I have never seen a skeptic lose their temper. On the contrary, when talking to users and true-believers they have always been kind.

Marketers and vice-chancellors are a different matter, but even for them I have never seen a lost temper, nor any shouting, just a bit of well-deserved blunt speaking.

I suspect that many of Frank's criticisms are aimed at behaviour that I have never seen.

@David Colquhoun I think Frank covered that point when he discussed the term 'woo' - a clear expression of contempt (and frankly a little reminiscent to me of the way some gay men used to refer to heterosexual men as 'breeders.') And yes, I have seen and read many 'strident skeptic' rants on both blogs and Twitter, extremely hostile challenges that amount to attempts neither to persuade nor to engage but to intimidate and beat into intellectual submission.

@Ruth Seeley
Certainly some writing, including some of mine may be quite strongly worded. but, at least among the people I read, it is based on thorough reading of the evidence. I don't apologise for bringing up the matter of evidence, because that's what it's about. I disapprove strongly of PR ("Paid lying") in other contexts, and I'm not about to do it myself.

I think you are not being clear about the targets. At the risk of repeating myself, most of us are not aiming at homeopaths, still less are we aiming at their customers. We are aiming at the people with power to do something about it, and we are aiming at companies who make large amounts of money from lies. We are also trying to press those responsible for enforcing the law (like Trading Standards) to do the job they are paid for.

Partly it is a question of what works. Rational argument is, in my experience, impossible with people like homeopaths because they simply don't accept the usual rules. It's a waste of time and I don't even try it, though if challenged I always respond to them calmly and courteously (and frequently get abuse in return).

You'd imagine that rational argument might work with vice-chancellors, but sadly it doesn't (that's a commentary on how corrupt academia can be at times). They do, however, respond to public ridicule.

Finally, to say one shouldn't use words like 'woo' strikes me as political correctness gone mad. It is the sort of thing you might hear from your HR department (and one can't say much worse than that). That is exactly how woo managed to penetrate universities in the first place. I don't think there is the slightest analogy between 'woo' and 'gay'. One is irrational, often illegal and sometimes kills people, The other is a personal choice of lifestyle. They are utterly different.

@NO ONE [because these sub conversations regularly devolve into tit for tat point proving drivel, which I consider to be one of the negatives of forums/blogs] - I feel to reach out to the masses, like good politicians, one needs to be warm and reassuring. You can bash facts all you like, and you may win a few battles along the way, but ultimately most people want to feel safe and comforted by guidance - no matter how reliable the source.

@David Colquhoun Sorry to find you disapprove of my profession, of HR practitioners and of administrators. I won't dignify the implication that anyone could pay me to lie with a response - after all, I have my own prejudices - I'm not overfond of dermatologists for instance, or insurance salespeople.

The analogy was actually between use of the term 'woo' by strident skeptics and 'breeder' by gay men when referring to heterosexual men, David, and I think that was quite clear. Woo is clearly derogatory and is meant to be both dismissive and derogatory. As is the term breeder. Your suggestion that being gay is 'a personal choice of lifestyle' did provide me with an unexpected giggle today - thanks for that.

And @Reef, yes I agree with you. I left a comment to applaud Frank's courage in saying some of the things many of us who ARE actually both sceptics and firmly in the evidence-based camp think - and have said before - and have been attacked for saying. That's life in the global village, I guess.

@Ruth Seeley
Aha I suspected you might be HR, and I guess I should have checked. Just one thing though, it is PR that I described as paid lying, not HR.

I'm not sure what it is that amused you about 'personal lifestyle choice'. What would you prefer?

I fear, though, that when woo penetrates the better universities, it usually comes in via HR. I had a big piece about that in Times Higher Education, which might (or might not) interest you http://www.dcscience.net/?p=226

There was a good example recently at University of Leicester http://www.dcscience.net/?p=258
That did eventually work out but it took a lot of effort (see http://www.dcscience.net/?p=1170 ).

At the moment I'm working (rather slowly)on a big article on "wellbeing". I'm trying to sort out how much is (well-meaning) psychobabble (or worse) and how much, if any, might actually do some good. I'll be interested to hear your opinion if I ever finish it.

@David Colquhoun I'm a public relations practitioner, David, and a single click through on my name in posted comments would have told you that.

From the albeit very limited research I have done, one does not 'choose' to be gay, so for an eminent researcher to describe being gay as a 'personal lifestyle choice' is very funny to me.

I look forward to reading your article - if you'd like my opinion on it, feel free to email me @ ruth@nospinpr.com.

I think Frank's comments are long overdue and the proof is in some of the comments in this thread.
I've seen much worse though in the comments on "Bad Science", some of the stuff there I could only describe as bigotry. Lots of self-righteous macho posturing and hatred.
Regarding the "In the Pub" issue, many people will be turned off the idea of meeting in a pub due to the fact that alcohol is on sale there. Think carefully, there are several different reasons why this should be the case.
"Think carefully"... wasn't that a little bit arrogant?
Maybe it's an internet thing... I'm obviously a troll and should GET OFF THIS THREAD

I fully admit that I personally dislike a lot of people who call themselves "skeptics," but that's because I'm convinced that they do so for the same reasons a majority of Americans call themselves Christians: pretense. For skeptics, it's a pretense of intellectualism and superiority, and for American Christians, of spirituality and morality. In both cases, people just want to feel "special," and that's why we make groups. Groups BY NATURE are insular, and if you want to avoid that, you avoid getting too involved with groups.

On the other hand, I view skeptics all around as a breath of fresh air away from all of this accommodating, sterile, politically-correct bullshit, and I wouldn't change that for the world.

@Mary: I agree about the meet and greet. Some of us discussed that after the meeting and decided to self-appoint as newbie welcomers (it may or may not be significant that everyone who approached me after some comments I made during the discussion to suggest this was female). I've done what I can when I was on the door at the Penderels and now there's no door list at the Monarch I can loiter near the bar to try and spot lone newbies. They're not always easy to spot when a lot of people turn up but I did meet two new women last time and introduced them to a few regulars. Maybe we should have badges - meet skeptics now, ask me how (or is everyone here too young to remember that reference?).

There's another element that Frank didn't mention, which is choosing your battles. Is it really worth upsetting someone you don't know and possibly everyone else at a social event when they start talking about something factually or medically wrong, for example? Having a go at someone just for the sake of showing you know more is behaviour I've seen in some skeptics. It's important to be humane. Kicking away someone's crutch isn't very helpful or productive.

Another thing is that some skeptics don't have great social skills and don't realise they're doing anything wrong. Some of them think that arguing is a form of flirting.

In general, it might help if we all remembered when we were new and didn't know much. We all have weak spots where faith triumphs over evidence - even if it's looking in the mirror, sucking in your beer gut and thinking a black T shirt covers all sins. A little more empathy would make skepticism an easier sell. Does that sound too touchy feely? It doesn't detract from the message, just packages it differently and more palatably.

On the other hand, some people are just really really annoying in their smugness and wrongness and need a bit of a poke. In a caring way...

This article is a little condescending ("we need to be more persuasive when telling people how stupid and ignorant they are!") but basically, you're edging towards my critique.

"Are James Randi's followers a community of newbie-gankers?"

The communities of skeptics online are succumbing to animal impulses. They're addicted to frequent victories over weak opponents. They need easy prey.

@27 Jeremy

Sorry you think that's the case; in fact at the Westminster talk I specifically chided several people at the end who asked questions along those lines.

That was the point I was making when I said that people base their choices on more than facts and that we need to understand and respect those influences.

Heheh, typical nit picking to ensue after a skeptical related post :)

To the OP, never read your blog before but just came across this post, thanks for the interesting write up. I have recently lost almost all confidence in anyone who is a self proclaimed skeptic, or logical/critical thinker. I've watched my friends who were simply anti-religious turn into robotic arrogant jerks at times, just because they now have a safe haven for insecurities surrounding infinite possibilities, which is known to them as skepticism.
My views changed drastically after experiencing my first OBE, and I'm happy to say since then and other experiences, I'll gladly keep a calm and more open approach to peoples views. And in day to day routine I am getting much better at simply listening to others and helping them out, rather than putting them down with ego based arguments.

Great post and you made an enjoyable read for at least one individual :)

For people holding such importance to facts, I personally wouldn't hold them too close, whilst they are nice and seem concrete, as well as give us a grounds to base presumptions and further possibilities on, facts can often change.